In Utter Darkness
by DrSwords
Summary: It's been 2 years since the defeat of the Ten-Tails. 2 years of peace. But dark times approach as reports of strange monsters and missing people surface. When an alien ship crashes outside of Konoha, Naruto and his friends must fight to protect their home as 2 deadly alien races clash around, above, and in their beloved village.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

The shinobi wrote. He wrote as fast as was legible; this message had to reach the Kages. But they were after him; he could hear them. He had run faster than he had ever run before, but they were just as fast. He heard the beat of their feet, and he wrote faster. He knew that even though his mission was a failure, and his team dead, he had to at least warn the villages. They had to know, before they were all dead, just like he was.

He reflected on his mission: The Mizukage had sent his team out to investigate some strange happenings. Reports of people gone missing, rumors of strange creatures, and the story about the living ground. His team leader had thought they were adequately prepared. They were wrong. They had made it to the small town in the forest, where the rumors had come from, but it had been silent; no one to be found. The ground was exactly as they said it had been: purple, living ground that had stuck to their feet as they walked.

The monsters were coming closer; he had to hurry. His team had made it to the center of the town, but they had run into a large organic-looking building. The monsters had waited for them; and they didn't even notice until it was too late.

He heard the footsteps; he knew what they were being made by. They were the small ones, they looked like dogs, except no fur, claws, wing-like appendages, and an evil look to them. These were small but fast- it had become painfully apparent when they pounced on his team. His squad leader had fallen to the things, and had been torn to shreds in an instant.

The rest of his squad had run, but more of the damn things had appeared behind them. There were other monsters too; he heard their scuttling nearby. Another team member had made the mistake of stabbing one with a kunai as it popped out of the ground. He could still hear her screams as the thing's bulbous green body had exploded, showering her in green acid.

He quickly ran to a tree, and jumped to a high branch. He heard the heavier footfalls of the bigger ones. He and his last team member had run into a pair of them just before they made it out of the village. His friend had stabbed at the monster, but the thing's thick armor had stopped that instantly. He didn't even have time to scream as the vile creature spat acid from its mouth into his chest.

The shinobi finished the message; he prayed it would reach the village in time. Just as the bird left his hand though, he heard the cry of the monsters below him. He jumped just in time as the big one spat acid at him. As he sailed through the air he watched the branch he had been on moments earlier melted. He landed on the ground, and the things attacked him immediately. Two of the little dog-like ones leaped at him, claws outstretched. A well thrown kunai punctured one through the throat, and it hit the ground at his feet. He dodged the other, and threw another kunai, but missed. He heard a scuttling noise; a green one on the right! The monster scuttled towards him just as the big armored one did. At the last second he jumped upwards, and watched the two collide. The green one exploded, and showered the big one in its acid, but the damn thing didn't die. It was still coming after him!

"Fire-style! Exploding Flame Shot!"

The creature screamed and writhed as the flames engulfed it. The shinobi didn't smile though; he heard even more coming. The message was sent; he wasn't fast enough to escape. The least he could do is kill as many of the damned monstrosities as he could and avenge his fallen squad.

The shinobi panted heavily. How long had he been fighting? Hours? It felt like an eternity. He looked around at the piles of corpses of the slain monsters, but he knew it mattered little. He had seen the eggs. The living building full of the luminescent green eggs and the other abominations that looked slightly human that tended to them. The taller building that had even more eggs hanging from the mushroom top, and the cries from within it.

A noise, a rustle in the bushes to the left! He turned as another dog-like monster burst out of the bushes screaming at him with unrivaled savagery. He threw his last blade straight in between its eyes, and it hit the ground at his feet. Before the light from the creatures eyes had faded though, two objects whizzed right past his head. It had been a diversion! He dodged to the side as a volley of serrated spines smashed into the tree trunk right behind him. Serrated spines? That was new; he hadn't seen anything that spat things like that before. He heard a slithering noise in the foliage; that sound was new too. He started to make hand seals, to shoot a jutsu at this new monster, but before he finished a spine struck him in the left shoulder. A twinge, and a searing pain started creeping up his arm. The spines were poisonous too?! He wrenched the thing out of his shoulder, and finished the jutsu. He heard a scream from the new monster, but he still couldn't see it. He heard another one behind him, but before he could turn another spine struck him in the leg, and another in the back. He cried out, and slumped against a tree. He slid down the side, and found he couldn't get up. As his vision blurred, he saw the serpentine tail of the monstrosity slither in front of him.

The thing was tall- maybe 12 feet or so, with a separated jaw. He noticed vaguely that instead of hands, the ends of the abomination's arms ended in vicious blades, as it raised one for a killing blow. Yup, this one was definitely a new one.


	2. Chapter 1: A Golden Morning

**Chapter One: A Golden Morning**

Naruto sighed tiredly. It had only been 2 years since the defeat of the Ten-Tails and already tensions were growing between the villages yet again. Sitting on the Hokage's desk in front of him was an angry letter from the Mizukage inquiring about a series of disappearances along the border between the lands of Water and Fire. He didn't even know how to answer; how was he supposed to know why these things were happening? He sighed again. He had to do something about this, before things got out of hand.

"Sasuke, what teams are available currently?" he asked his best friend and second-in-command.

"Um, currently? Team Eight, and several of the newer teams."

"We need a more experienced team; this is an S-ranked mission. We can't afford to send anyone less experienced for this one."

"Team Eight it is then. I'll send for them."

Naruto nodded his approval, and began writing a response back to the Mizukage. Halfway through, Team Eight walked in.

"You sent for us Naruto?" Hinata asked him.

Naruto looked up at his fiancée and her team members.

"Yes I did," he said, "I have a mission for you: S-rank."

"What are the details?" Kiba asked.

"Recently a village in the Land of Water near our border went dark; there's been no contact at all for the last 2 weeks. The Mizukage sent out 4 different teams to investigate what has happened, but since then none of them have been heard from. The only thing they ever got back was a heavily bloodstained note that was almost totally incomprehensible. The Mizukage is suspicious that Konoha is behind these occurrences."

"So now you're sending us to investigate?"

"Yes. You are to go to the village and find out what happened. However, this appears to be more dangerous than most missions, so you are to utilize extreme caution. Take absolutely no risks unless necessary. My preference would be that once within range, Hinata just use your Byakugan to scout the area without putting yourself in harm's way."

"Don't worry Naruto. You can count on us," Kiba assured him.

Naruto nodded at his friends.

"Good luck. Return the minute you discover what happened," he told them.

The members of Team Eight nodded, and took their leave. As they left the Hokage's office they began to discuss the details of their mission.

"I wonder what's causing these 'disappearances'," Kiba said.

"I don't know," Shino said, "but whatever it is, or whoever, they must be pretty powerful to take out 4 of the Hidden Mist's elite shinobi teams."

"Yeah, no kidding," Kiba nodded, "We'd better be real careful, cause I'd rather not tangle with whatever can do that. Luckily we can just have Akamaru sniff out any trouble before we run into it."

Hinata opened her mouth to assure her friend that they would be able to handle anything that they ran into, when a crash similar to that of a thunderstorm resounded overhead. Everybody in the entire city looked up at the cloudless sky; only it wasn't cloudless as it had been a minute ago. Hovering above Konoha was an ominously swirling, dark thundercloud; simply a big ball of cloud in the cloudless summer sky. It was a weird looking cloud at that too: a rotating flat disk of cloud that had thunder and lightning emanating from its unworldly, and impossible, depths.

"What is that?" Kiba wondered, a little unnerved.

Hinata immediately tried to use her Byakugan, but she couldn't see anything.

"I have no idea," she said, "whatever it is, my Byakugan isn't working on it. I can't even see it."

Back inside the Hokage's office, Naruto just finished up the letter to the Mizukage. He hoped Mei would believe that Konoha had nothing to do with these occurrences; after all, Konoha didn't exactly have the friendliest history with Kirigakure. And besides, it had only been 2 years since the last Shinobi World War; wasn't everybody tired of fighting? He was quickly shaken from his reverie when Shikamaru burst into the room.

"Naruto! You need to come outside right away!" his chief strategist told him urgently.

"What is it?" Naruto got up and followed Shikamaru out of the room.

"No idea," he replied, "This cloud thing appeared out of nowhere above the village. You need to see this for yourself."

Naruto and Shikamaru quickly made it to the Hokage Building rooftop, and looked at the swirling disk of cloud. Naruto gazed up at the phenomenon, watching the flashes of lighting from within its impossible depths.

'How could there be lightning in there?' Naruto wondered silently, 'It's just a vertical, circular disk of cloud; there's nowhere for the lightning to be.'

"What is that thing?" he asked out loud.

"No idea," a voice said behind him.

Naruto's sensei, Kakashi, had silently joined them on the rooftop.

"No visual jutsu can see into it, and there's nothing to explain its occurrence," he continued, "It just appeared randomly, and neither the Hyuuga's Byakugan or my Sharingan can see it at all."

Naruto was just about to ask another question when an even louder thunderclap followed a particularly bright flash of lightning. Naruto looked up at the disk again, just in time.

A great golden ….. thing, was suddenly appearing out of the disk's side. This was impossible though, considering the disk wasn't even a meter thick. As he watched, the golden object continued to emerge from the cloud, revealing it to be made of metal. Curved, with lots of lights all around it; it was the most outlandish thing Naruto had ever seen. As it went overhead, he noticed uniform rectangular holes in the object's side, though what they were for he hadn't the faintest idea. There were also other holes too, but these were definitely not the same; these were massive tears in the object's metal skin. Whatever the thing was, it was clearly damaged. The great metal thing flew overhead, casting Konoha in its immense shadow. Finally, the thing flew completely over, and Naruto noticed blue flames coming out of several large openings in the object's back.

The object soared over Konoha, right over the Hokage monument, and out of sight. But they all heard (and felt) the resounding crash that occurred soon afterwards. Every shinobi in the village stared in open-mouthed shock. As one, everybody started heading towards the Hokage Monument to see what the heck just happened. At the top, they all stared at what used to be a nice perfectly green forest. Now, there was a massive mile-long crater dragging across the ground away from the village. Whatever the thing was, it was colossal; big enough to make a trench at least 90 ft deep and a couple hundred feet wide.

Cautiously, everybody followed the large trench, Naruto in front. Through the trees they saw the great hulking metal thing settling in the large crater it created on impact. Smoke trickled out of many of the massive tears in the object.

"Get everyone back to the village as quickly as you can," Naruto ordered Sasuke and Shikamaru, "And recall Team Eight; they now have a new mission."


	3. Chapter 2: Infiltration

**Disclaimer: Right, forgot to do this earlier. Anyways, I don't own Naruto or anything affiliated with it, etc. etc. Same goes for StarCraft.**

**Chapter Two: Infiltration**

"Okay, so, we need to get inside that golden … whatever it is, and find out what it is and what's inside it. Once we've done that, we just gotta get back to Konoha and report it to Naruto. Shouldn't be too difficult right?" Kiba said softly to his comrades.

Hinata and Shino nodded silently. Akamaru sniffed the air, then whined and growled.

"Whatever's in there, Akamaru doesn't like it," Kiba observed, "From what I gather, whatever is in there isn't human either. Hinata, use your Byakugan. See what you can find out."

Hinata nodded, and activated her Byakugan. She stared at the great metal thing for a few minutes before speaking.

"There's things in there all right, but I can't see them properly. There's something around them all that's blurring my vision. They're big though, bigger than us for sure, and there's a lot of them."

Kiba and Shino nodded.

"Okay, let's get in there and find out what they are then."

"How?" Shino asked, "The thing is huge, where would we get in?"

"There's a big hole in the side, right over there," Kiba pointed to a large jagged cut about 2/3's of the way up, "We'll use the trees, and get in through there."

"Got it."

The 4 of them withdrew from the tree line where they had been hiding, and stealthily made their way around the edge, towards the middle of the big thing. As they climbed up into a large tree near the edge of the hole, something caught Hinata's eye. Three patches of shimmering air were exiting from one of the rectangular holes a few yards from where they were. Hinata looked back, but they were gone, and she assumed it had just been a reflection from the object.

They all made it to the edge of the tree, where a branch nearly touched the large tear in the object. One by one they silently jumped in, and landed on a metal floor. Looking around, they were in a large metal passageway, with pipes running down the inner side wall. Steam issued forth from them periodically.

They silently crept down the passage, wary of anything they might run into. They turned right at a fork in the passageway, and entered a larger room, filled with strange golden objects. On racks on the walls were golden suits, but they were far too big for any shinobi to wear. There were also golden things that resembled armor for the arm on a shelf nearby. Kiba was about to pick one up when a funny clicking and beeping sound came from behind them. Something was coming down the hall they had just come from.

"Hide!" Hinata whispered urgently.

She and her team quickly ducked behind a large counter with more sets of armor on top of it. Hinata poked her head out from behind the table to see what it was that was coming. It looked like some sort of hovering golden robot with four wings with blue fins on the ends. A big blue orb occupied the back, with a metal scorpion tail supporting it. There seemed to be what looked like a blue eye in the very front. The robot paused and looked around the room. With another beep it continued on through the room, through another open door in the back. Hinata motioned to her teammates silently to follow the golden robot.

They followed it down two hallways, and then onto a large walkway. Every member of the team gasped. They were in a very large room, big enough to fit several houses in. Far below them more of those robots roamed about, and it looked like there were conveyer belts going up and down with odd bits of metal all across the floor. None of them were moving however, and the only sounds came from the beeping and clicking noises the robots issued every now and then. They would have stayed longer, but that same beeping sounded from very close by, from one of the walkways to their left. Quickly, the team crept up a ramp, into the higher levels of this strange place.

They found themselves in a large hallway, with glass windows down one side. The shinobi could see the forest for quite a distance from the view they provided. They continued to another ramp, until they reached a large open room, with large glass windows up front. There were tables below these windows, just layered with buttons and images on panels of glass. Operating each one was an ….. alien.

There was no other word for them. They were easily 8 or 9 feet tall, very slender, but each wore the golden armor they had seen earlier. They all had odd looking skin and they were colored blue, green, and even purple. Each and every one of them had long braids of hair in dreadlocks coming out of the back of their heads. The shinobi looked at a table in the middle of the room, where four of these aliens were gathered around. They looked at their faces. These aliens had large orb-like luminescent eyes, no nose, no mouth, and no ears. When one placed their hands on the table they saw these aliens only had four fingers.

"What's our situation?" one of them, a female, said.

Only they didn't say it. The words echoed in the shinobi's heads as if they were spoken, but these aliens had no mouths with which to do so. These aliens were telepaths!

"Executor, the Gantrithor II took heavy damage during the battle, and the crash has disrupted power to all parts of the ship. We're running on emergency back-up power, but that's only enough to keep the ship alive," a male one responded.

"As I feared," the female one said, "The corrupters did more damage than I originally thought. What of our combat situation? Is this ship capable of defending itself in any way?"

"Unfortunately no. The psionic matrix is offline, as well as most of the carrier's internal structures. The forges miraculously still have power, but with the matrix down, they're not going to be very useful. We do have a number of functional warp prisms, but many were damaged in the battle. Until we can restore power, they will be the only way to get our forces on and off the ship."

"Hmmm. Very well. Get that matrix back up and running as fast as possible. As soon as it is, I want pylons surrounding this ship; the Gantrithor must be protected at all costs if we want to have any hope of seeing Shakuras again. Is there anything out there that could be a threat to us?"

"Our observers have detected a sizeable native population close by. It appears they are terran in origin. We've received a few images from the observers on them."

"Hmph," a younger male spoke up, "These may look human, but they cannot possibly be terran. Look at their settlement; it's laughably primitive. I doubt we have anything to fear from them."

"Do not be so quick to judge," the older male said sternly, "The humans have proven themselves to be quite resourceful and inventive. If they are anything like their terran counterparts, they could prove to be cunning and dangerous foes indeed."

"The Praetor is right," the female one said, "We should exercise caution around them. Get the forges constructing photon cannons immediately. Once the matrix is back online we'll need to erect defenses around the ship quickly in case the natives prove hostile. Do we have any stalkers to support the cannons?"

"Dark Prelate Mohandar had our Nerazim brethren under his command in the battle. We have around one hundred stalkers, but Mohandar had the rest, and most that we have need to be repaired before they will be ready for combat again."

The female made a sound equivalent to a mental sigh.

"Very well; we'll just have to rely on our sentries for now. We're going to have to work from the ground up; once we have power we must construct a photon cannon grid as a primary line of defense. Luckily we're on elevated terrain, so we have a height advantage in that regard. We also need gateways down on the ground to send our troops through to support the cannons. While that's happening get the cybernetics core back up and running; we'll need to repair our stalkers and construct more sentries to ensure our ranged defenses are adequate."

"As you wish Executor."

The female alien straightened up, and put her hand to her temple. Her mental voice rang out, louder than Hinata or her teammates expected was possible.

"This is High Executor Selendis, captain of the Gantrithor II speaking to all crew members. All personnel are to be on high alert, and are expected to assist the ship's engineers in repairing this vessel to the best of their abilities. Report to your superior officer for further instructions."

Hinata motioned to her teammates to start backing out. It was time to leave before they were discovered. As they turned, they came face to face with one of the floating robots with the blue orb. The thing started to beep very loudly, sending out an alarm. Hinata looked behind herself to see every alien in the room behind them staring at them.

"Run!" she told her teammates.

They ran, as fast as they were capable of. They raced down hallway after hallway, back the way they had come. They rounded a corner, and found yet another one of those robots blocking their way. It fired an odd black beam at them. All four of them dodged it, but the robot's attack was continuous, it simply kept going. Kiba and Akamaru charged at the robot, not caring that it was easily Akamaru's size. Hinata wasn't surprised when the two of them used their Gatsūga technique, as it was a favorite of theirs.

However, before they hit the robot, they collided with a blue barrier that surrounded it. The two bounced off, knocking them both backwards. However, the robot was knocked back too, and whatever that blue barrier was, the technique seemed to have broken it. Shino quickly took advantage of this, and used a bug swarm to engulf the robot entirely. Through the cocoon of insects they could see the robot's black beam whipping around, cutting through insects indiscriminately. Finally, the beam cut right through the middle of the swarm, causing the insects to scatter to the sides. The four shinobi could practically see the robot's surprise as Hinata came flying towards it, Hakke Shishō jutsu at the ready. The jutsu struck the robot right above its eye, and the poor thing shattered into a dozen pieces. Its blue orb rolled away forlornly, but they didn't notice as they kept running.

They could hear more of those robots behind them, though, and they kept running. They could see the exit they came in through, and they all started sprinting towards it. Just as they were about to reach it though, a shimmering energy barrier appeared right in the middle of them, cutting Hinata off from the others. Somehow, these robots could use some sort of barrier jutsu!

"Keep going!" she yelled to her friends, "I'll find another way out."

"We're not leaving you!" Kiba argued, as he and Akamaru pounded against the barrier that separated them.

"There isn't time for this, just go," Hinata yelled at her friend, "I'll be fine, just get back to Konoha and inform Naruto. We cannot fail the mission, no matter what the cost!"

Kiba looked like he was going to cry a little, and Akamaru was whining frantically.

"We're not going to abandon you," he swore to her, "We're coming back for you, and nothing's going to stop us when we do. You just keep yourself alive until we do okay?"

Hinata nodded. Kiba, Akamaru, and Shino took one last glance back, then ran on, through the hole in the ship from which they came, and out of sight. Hinata turned to go back, but no less than five of the robots, she assumed these were the sentries the female alien spoke of, had closed in behind her. The barrier faded, and she rushed to follow her friends, but another three sentries blocked her. She looked around for some way to escape, but she was completely surrounded. She took a deep breath, and prepared to fight, to the death if need be.


	4. Chapter 3: The Best Defense

**Chapter 3: The Best Defense…**

"How could you leave her behind?" Naruto yelled.

"We didn't have a choice!" Kiba defended, "The barrier jutsu was too strong to be broken in time, and there were more of them closing in on us. She told us to run."

"Naruto, calm down. It's not their fault," Sakura snapped at him, "We'll get her back, you know that."

"I know, I know. But no matter what, we're not leaving a comrade behind enemy lines. We need to get her out quickly, before something happens to her!"

"Well we can't just rush in there," Sasuke interjected, "From what Kiba and Shino said that would be suicide. We should assemble a small team that can stealthily get in there, find and rescue her, and get out without being caught."

"That might not be prudent either," Kakashi warned, "Perhaps a more diplomatic approach should be called for?"

Naruto nodded at his teacher.

"Agreed. We'll try diplomacy first, but if that doesn't work then we'll try doing this Sasuke's way. Sasuke, get shinobi teams ready to go in case this doesn't work. Shikamaru, start working on a battle strategy should things turn bad."

The pair of them nodded, and left the building. Naruto looked over at his teacher.

"Come on; let's see if your diplomatic approach is effective."

Onboard the Gantrithor II…..

"What was a group of those terrans doing sneaking around onboard my ship?!" Executor Selendis slammed her fist onto a table, "I thought we had the place locked down. How did they get onboard?!"

"From the video shot by the sentries, they got in through one of the big tears in the ship's frame that occurred during the battle. It would appear this strain of terran is capable of more, physically, than the terrans of the Koprulu Sector," the Praetor replied.

"Also, these terrans seem to have powers far beyond anything the terrans at home have," another added, "We recovered a recording of the battle from the destroyed sentries. They all appear to have unique abilities, and a curious affinity with this planet's native animals."

"These powers that they have, are they psionic-based?" the Executor asked.

"We're not sure; not enough data to draw any solid conclusions," the Praetor folded his arms, "However, we do have a tactical analysis of their combat capabilities now. They are nimble, and tough, as the female demonstrated when she dismantled another two sentries before being brought down. However, their powers do have a limit, which we can use to our advantage."

"Executor!" another alien called from the front of the bridge, "The observers show the terrans are mobilizing; they could be gathering for an attack."

Executor Selendis and her advisors strode over to the monitor. The observers were hovering over the terran village, giving them all a bird's eye view of the whole place. A male terran with black hair was directing a group of at least 40 of his brethren, all armed. At least, they looked armed; they had rather primitive metal weapons.

"What do you think, Praetor?" the Executor asked him, "There's enough for a moderate-sized attack on our position. What do you think they're planning?"

"Hmmmmm. From what I've seen of the terrans, they don't like to abandon their own kind. My guess is they're coming for the female; they'll want her back, whether she's alive or otherwise."

"Should we assume they're hostile?" the younger male asked.

"Not immediately, no. They'll probably sue for peace first; try a diplomatic approach to try and resolve this without bloodshed. However, we should prepare to defend the ship anyways, just to be safe."

"Agreed," the Executor nodded, "What's our situation on the ground?"

"The warp matrix is back online, so we've begun to fortify our position. We've begun placing a photon cannon grid around the ship, and the four guarding the way up the hill will be finished warping in by the time the terrans arrive."

"What do we have supporting them?"

"As of right now, we have 5 sentries, 13 zealots, and 7 stalkers on the ground ready to support the defensive matrix, with two of our high templar on the way. If they attack, we'll be prepared."

"Executor?" the younger one spoke up, "Permission to join the defense? I want to see these terrans for myself."

Selendis looked over at him, then looked over at the Praetor next to her.

"Permission granted," the Praetor nodded, "Do mind yourself though, won't you? You're my best disciple, Thanatos. I'm not keen on losing you because of some petty conflict."

Thanatos nodded, and left the bridge.

Naruto, Kakashi, and Sakura made their way through the forest, towards the crash site. They could see the great ship looming above them, even from the bottom of the hill. Up at the top, the 3 of them observed 4 golden platforms with a golden orb floating above them. Naruto and the others slowly ascended the hill, wary of the aliens onboard the ship that could attack them at any moment. However, nothing happened as they made it to the top of the hill, and passed the floating gold orbs unhindered. Before them stood 5 of the aliens themselves. They were just as Kiba and Shino described them; 8 or 9 feet tall, no nose or mouth, and dressed in gold armor with blue lines.

"We wish to speak with your leader," Naruto told them.

One of them, a younger one by the looks of him, motioned for them to follow him. The 3 shinobi obliged, and he led them to a small metal building with glass screens. Sakura wondered what that huge floating crystal with the ring around it nearby was, and did it do? As they approached, one of the glass screens flickered, and an image of a light purple, female alien appeared on it.

"En Taro Tassadar," her words echoed in their minds, "I am High Executor Selendis, Commander of the Gantrithor II. Who are you?"

"I am Naruto Uzumaki, Hokage and leader of the village of Konoha, and these are two of my top advisors, Kakashi Hatake, and Sakura Haruno."

"What is it that you want, Naruto Uzumaki, Hokage of Konoha?"

"You are holding one of us hostage. We want her released immediately."

"Is that a demand?" the Executor asked testily.

"No, it's not," Sakura quickly intervened, "We were only curious about what your ship was; we meant no harm. This is a friendly request, please."

The alien Executor looked at them hard, her eyes narrowed slightly.

"Your people were found sneaking around onboard the Gantrithor, and when discovered they attacked and destroyed 3 of our sentries trying to escape. If you were any other terran that would have been seen as a declaration of war and we would have responded immediately to your hostility with lethal force."

"Wait, what did you just call us?" Naruto asked.

"Terrans. Judging by your appearance I assume you are human, are you not?"

"Yes, we are human," Kakashi said in a calm, gentler manner, "but we call ourselves shinobi."

"I see. You are a different strain of terran then. Now, as for your request, I cannot simply give her back to you. She is responsible for the destruction of three of our military constructs, and must be held accountable for her actions."

"We understand," Naruto replied, "We are willing to try and compensate for the loss."

"And how would you do that? You do not have the materials or the technology to do so," she replied.

"Even so, there must be some way we can help you," Sakura pressed.

"Perhaps. We will consider your proposal," Selendis nodded at them.

Naruto was about to respond, but it didn't matter. Before he got the chance, an alarm sounded on the Executor's end.

"Executor, proximity alert! Several hostiles invading on deck 12."

The Executor swiftly turned back to Naruto, Kakashi, and Sakura; there was no mistaking the glaring anger in her eyes.

"I should have suspected some type of under-handed move like this! You terrans are all the same; honor is so scarce amongst your race!"

"Wait, what? I didn't order anything like this! I told everybody to stay put!" Naruto exclaimed frantically, "I told them to stand down!"

The Executor made a vehement mental sound.

"Be gone!" she said, "Thanatos, have your zealots escort these 3 out of our base. We will deal with them soon enough."

The 5 aliens, apparently these were called zealots, surrounded the 3 shinobi. Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi had no choice but to allow themselves to be led out of the base. Naruto's mind was reeling; he had given specific orders not to antagonize these aliens. What had just happened? Who was attacking the Protoss against his direct orders?

Back in Konoha, Naruto rushed straight over to his second-in-command.

"SASUKE!" he yelled, "We were in the middle of negotiations; things were looking good! We could have ended this in a perfectly peaceful manner! WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!"

Sasuke shook his head frantically; he looked just as shocked as Naruto did.

"I don't know!" he said, "I made sure everyone was just ready, nothing else! No one was allowed to leave; I didn't let anyone exit the village!"

"Well then, explain why, in the middle of talking with the leader of the aliens, their proximity alarm went off and they said they were under attack!"

"I don't know! I swear, I kept everyone inside!"

"It's too late for that now," Shikamaru came over, "Whoever it was who just did that doesn't matter; they've put us in a very dangerous position either way. We need to prepare to defend the village now, before things get even worse."

Sasuke nodded.

"I'll round up all the members of the Konoha 11, and as many others as I can find," he promised, and with that, he was running down the road.

High Executor Selendis looked down at the dead bodies of 2 of her zealots. Nearby lay the bodies of their killers; 7 of the treacherous terran shinobi. She let out a mental sigh of frustration. For a group of people who said they didn't want hostilities they were doing a very good job of instigating it. What would be their motive behind such an attack that couldn't possibly succeed?

"They took them by surprise," the Praetor walked up, "Caught them with their shields down. Though, it's odd; all 7 of these terrans have pure white eyes, just like the female. What would be their motivation for treachery, using such a small force?"

"They will pay for this!" she hissed, "No matter their reasons, this is a clear act of war. We will respond to this as we would any other foe."

"The terrans are gathering even more of their forces; they are likely to make a second attempt at our position."

"Then we need to stop them."

"How?"

"They can't attack us if we strike first. Prepare the warp prisms; we're going to return the favor to these … shinobi."


	5. Chapter 4: Is a Good Offense

**Chapter 4: Is a Good Offense**

"Shikamaru, we need to set up defenses now!" Naruto told his friend urgently.

"I'm already on it, Shikamaru was in front of a small model of Konoha, frantically moving little model people all around it, "We need to set up scouts along the walls, and have response teams at the ready in all parts of the village."

"We've already started on that, but what about a battle strategy?"

"I don't know. I don't have anything to go on that would help me."

Naruto ran his hand through his hair anxiously.

"This is a disaster; who attacked the aliens while we were talking to them, and why would they do something that stupid?"

"I don't think that matters now," Sasuke said, "The aliens will think we have declared war on them for this. They're going to want to attack us back in retaliation."

Naruto nodded grimly. He got up to gather his friends, and join in the defense of Konoha. This was his village after all; he wasn't going to let it get destroyed by anyone, no matter what the situation was.

Outside, members of the Konoha 11 asked him what was going on.

"Naruto, what's happening?" Tenten came running up, "Sasuke and Shikamaru are rounding up everybody and sending them all over the village. What's going on?"

"We're preparing for an attack," Naruto said grimly, "Someone attacked the aliens while we were speaking to them, and now they're on the warpath. They're probably preparing already."

"What?" Choji exclaimed, "How? What happened?"

"I don't know, but we need to get ready; the aliens could be hear any mom-"

Just as Naruto was about to finish his sentence, 3, gold, blue-finned, metal machines flew overhead. They flew right over the town, and started to descend near Konoha's Third Training Ground.

"They're here!" Naruto and his friends quickly raced to the Training Ground.

By the time they arrived, the area was already engulfed in battle. Shinobi and the aliens were darting around all over the area; the whole place was in utter chaos. For a moment, they were struck by the grace with which the battle progressed, despite its lack of organized fighting. The aliens were very graceful in combat, just as the shinobi were. The reverie was broken however, as 2 of the aliens charged them. Tenten and Choji immediately rushed in and engaged the pair of them, making the chaotic scene even harder to follow.

Naruto waded into the battle, helping his fellow shinobi as best he could. This wasn't like any other fight though; these aliens were so much tougher, and they just would not stand still either. Through the crowd he saw Tenten in hand-to-hand combat with one of them, and Choji and Ino fighting another.

Tenten threw several kunai at her alien opponent, only to have them all bounce right its shield. Her taijutsu wasn't working either; the thing's armor was preventing her from landing an effective strike. She knew she wouldn't be able to beat this thing the way she was now; she needed a weapon at least. She quickly threw a volley of kunai with explosive tags attached to them to give her a bit of a reprieve. In the brief time it took for her opponent to recover she pulled out a katana, and prepared for another clash.

Naruto dodged to the side to avoid a punch from one of the alien zealots, and hit him in return. The blow didn't break the zealot's shield, but it did make it stumble backwards a bit. Naruto used the opportunity to land several more blows, each only landing on the shield, but still keeping the zealot at bay. Naruto went in to deliver a series of blows to break the shield for good, but the minute he closed in the zealot recovered and punched him in the gut. He stumbled backwards as the alien prepared to finish him off.

"Rasengan!" Naruto struck the zealot in the chest with his signature Rasengan jutsu.

The zealot went flying backwards, and smashed into a tree. Before he could get up, Sasuke jumped forwards, and plunged his sword into the alien's slender torso. With a mental cry, the alien vanished in a gout of what looked like blue flames.

'So they can die,' Naruto thought.

He looked around the battle; things were not right. Why weren't any of the aliens armed? Either they were grossly overconfident in their abilities (or grossly underestimating the abilities of their enemies), or they were holding back. The second option was a rather scary thought; they were already tough opponents, but when they were armed? Across the battlefield, he saw Kiba and Akamaru fighting another zealot. He recognized this one; it was the younger one who had led them through the base for their audience with their leader. His armor was different; it was a little thicker, and more ornate. Before he could run over to help them, another zealot attacked him and Sasuke.

Tenten's battle with the zealot had raged across the town. They had fought all the way out of the training ground, and were now dueling near the stadium. She tried to slash at the alien's shoulder, but as always the blow just glanced off the shield. She quickly had to duck to avoid the alien's counter, which ended up making a web of cracks in the wall next to her. She attacked twice more. The first blow did nothing, but the second seemed to give a bit more than the others. Wait! She hit the shield again. Was it just her, or was it growing weaker? She dodged to the side, and brought her sword down hard. The zealot staggered back as the sword struck his armor on the shoulder. Yes; the alien's shields were breakable!

On the training grounds, only three battles were left; all the other battles had spread out across the village. The only remaining duels were between Kiba, Akamaru, Choji, Ino, Sasuke, Naruto, and their respective 3 opponents. Ino and Choji darted all around their foe, but they just couldn't get through his defenses. Choji rushed towards the alien, but a swift open-hand blow sent him flying backwards. Ino was now fighting the zealot by herself. With a deep breath, she picked up a fallen kunai and prepared to duel with her foe.

Naruto dodged a swinging punch from the zealot he and Sasuke were fighting, as his friend tried to get behind the alien. A spinning kick denied that though. Across the field, he saw Kiba and Akamaru trying to bring the younger zealot down, but they just couldn't do it. As he watched, the zealot suddenly spun and kicked Akamaru, sending the dog flying into a tree. Akamaru crashed into the tree and slid down, hitting the ground hard. With a furious yell, Kiba tried to charge the alien that hurt his friend, but the zealot twisted around, and Kiba ran straight into an uppercut to the stomach. Without pause, the alien grabbed Kiba by the throat, flung him over his head, and threw him to the ground. Kiba hit the ground, and did not get back up. The young zealot turned to leave the training ground to rejoin the battle.

"Naruto, go after him!" Sasuke told his friend, "We'll handle things here, and join you soon as we can."

Naruto nodded, and ran after the alien.

Ino fought her hardest, but the kunai was short, and her opponent had a much greater reach than she did. Even unarmed, the zealot's range exceeded hers by a good 6 inches. She sliced at the alien, but she couldn't get close enough to do anything. Finally, she got inside his guard, and stabbed the kunai through his shield and into the armor that protected his chest. She paid dearly for this however, as a kick from the zealot's armored leg caught her hard right in the side. She flew to the side, and hit the ground hard on her shoulder. From the pain that flooded her left side, she knew at least 3 of her ribs had just been broken. Choji yelled in fury, and used an Expansion jutsu, making himself bigger. The zealot looked up at his foe, now bigger than he was.

Naruto finally caught up with his foe, a good half the village away by then. The young zealot turned to face him. Naruto ran towards him, a Rasengan in hand. The zealot jumped straight over him, and kicked him through a wooden wall on the way down. He turned to finish the Naruto off, but as he neared the human vanished in a puff of smoke!

'This terran is capable of making hallucinations?' Thanatos realized.

Too late he turned at the yell of his real opponent, and was sent flying all the way through the building, smashing into a courtyard on the other side. He got up groggily to see Naruto rushing towards him again, another Rasengan in hand. He jumped to the side, and watched the Rasengan tear through the stone wall like it was paper. It would appear he would need to use more than just his limbs to fight this one. To win this fight, he was going to need to use a weapon.

Back on the training ground, one of the aliens dodged to the left to avoid being crushed by Choji's massive fist. He twisted, and used the claws on his 4 fingers to gouge 4 long cuts in the back of his opponent's hand. Choji yelled in pain, and swatted at the alien in retaliation. The blow caught the zealot full in the front and sent him flying all the way across the river. The alien flipped over and used its hand to stop the slide, and glared at Choji. With that he turned around and ran into the city. The other zealot seeing this, swiftly caught Sasuke with a kick under the chin, and followed suit. Choji shrunk back down to normal size, then ran to check on his friends.

Across the village, Tenten fought her opponent for what seemed like hours without reprieve. She had brought down his shields, but his armor was still keeping her from landing a killing blow. Her heart sank as she took a glance down the road; Sakura and two other shinobi were fighting two more zealots. Sakura's fight soon passed out of sight, but the other two shinobi stayed where they were. As she fought, she watched the other fight nearby. The two shinobi were doing fairly well, but the alien was too.

Naruto continued to attack the younger alien relentlessly, using everything he had at his disposal. He cursed himself for not thinking of storing nature energy for sage mode beforehand. He used 4 of his shadow clones to attack the zealot, while he tried to rest a bit.

Thanatos knew the time had come, he pressed a button on his arm to signal the other zealots. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, and activated his psionic blades. Like a windmill he tore through the human's pathetic copies, and charged in to take out the annoying little human for good.

Sakura saw the battle suddenly going horrendously wrong. As she watched from the building she was fighting from, all the aliens across the village were activating some sort of energy blade from their wrists. She stared in horror as one of the aliens below spun behind one of her fellow shinobi, and impaled him through the back. With a quick shove, the alien pushed the dying shinobi off the blade and charged towards another. Sakura turned back to her opponent, who was charging at her in the exact same manner.

She jumped to the side, and flung a kunai at the charging alien. The weapon bounced off his shield, and the zealot turned to face her once more. This time they charged each other at the same time, and clashed right in the center of the building's roof. In hand-to-hand combat the 2 fought up and down the rooftop, trying to get the better of one another. The alien cut Sakura across the shoulder, and she responded with a kick in the chest. Blow for blow they matched each other, neither one willing to give ground. Sakura noticed the zealot's height, and realized it could be their undoing.

She darted to the side, and with a spin, she tripped the alien and sent him crashing onto his back. He sliced at her, keeping her from hitting him again while he was on the ground, so she punched the roof instead. The zealot yelled as he crashed through 3 floors to the tile of the ground level below. She jumped down after him, and drew her fist back for a Cherry Blossom Impact. She caught the alien in the midsection and drove him into the ground, but halfway through the alien vanished in a flash of blue flames, and her fist slammed into the ground. She could still hear the dying yell of her opponent in her head though.

Naruto was evading the young alien's blades as best he could. He wasn't sure what they would do, but he wasn't keen to find out either way. He and the zealot had fought for so long, and the courtyard that was their battleground was completely destroyed as a result of this. He backed up to avoid another slash, but he backed up too far, and his balance was suddenly off center. The young zealot moved in for the kill, but Naruto smiled as his left hand shot forward with a Rasengan. The zealot tried to evade, but the attack hit him square in the right shoulder. At the same time though, Naruto felt a searing pain as the alien's other blade sank just under his right collarbone. Had the Rasengan not hit, the blade would have gone straight through his body.

Naruto sagged down a little, shocked at the deep wound the alien had inflicted. The young zealot closed in slowly, raising his arm for what was clearly meant to be a decapitation blow. Before he could though, a white-haired, masked ninja hit him with a flying kick, lifting the alien clean off his feet and smashing him into a low wall.

"Kakashi sensei!" Naruto gasped in relief.

"Don't worry Naruto," his teacher told him, "I'll handle this."

Thanatos slowly got up, and reactivated his arm blades. This masked human was fast, fast enough to match him. The human made a bunch of hand signs suddenly, and before he knew what was happening, they were breathing fire at him. He rolled to the side, and charged the fire-breathing human. Weird though, he had seen humans with devices that spat fire, but none that could do so without the help of a machine. These shinobi were indeed worthy foes.

The masked ninja saw him charging on his right, and jumped to avoid him, but he was too slow to evade his psionic blade; the blow cut him straight in half. The ninja vanished with a puff of smoke. This one could create hallucinations too! The real one landed behind him, and suddenly there was water all around them. The observers had seen enough though to give the Executor and his mentor a good understanding of the shinobi's fighting abilities, and so he pressed another button on his arm, signaling the warp prisms to retrieve all surviving zealots. He did this at the cost of being able to defend himself however, as a great water serpent created by the masked ninja struck him head on. The blow crushed his armor's teleporting system; he had no way out. Disgusted with himself, he instructed the warp prisms to leave without him, before the water smashed him into a building, causing him to black out.

The Praetor observed the masked ninja, his eyes narrowed. The human was strong, strong enough to beat his best student. That was unacceptable.

Tenten's opponent was distracted by a beeping from his arm. As the alien looked down at the light flashing on his armor, she saw her opportunity at last. She attacked twice, catching him by surprise and landed both hits. He attacked back, but she flipped and evaded his attack, before stabbing at him with her own. As the zealot shuffled backwards, she did a spinning slash to slice him in half. The alien reflexively raised his left arm to block, and the sword crushed straight through the armor and drew blood. He however, hit her in the stomach with an uppercut. Tenten sagged forward slightly as she lost her air, and the zealot drew his arm back slightly. Tenten gasped in shock and pain, looking down. The zealot had activated his arm's energy blade, and she stared at the weapon that was now going through her abdomen. With a flourish, the zealot pulled the blade free, turned, and walked away. Tenten collapsed to her knees, and keeled over onto her side. She watched as the alien turned into a bunch of blue particles as one of the golden ships flew overhead, and her vision turned black.

Author's note: In case of confusion, I play StarCraft 2 all the time, and am basing all SC2 characters off their respective in-game units.


	6. Chapter 5: Pausing for Breath

**Chapter 5: Pausing for Breath**

Hinata hammered on the blue barrier that trapped her. She growled in frustration at the unyielding wall, attacking the thing with everything she had. She even tried using several jutsus, but they all were absorbed by the blue wall. With an angry yell, she gathered all her remaining chakra for one final assault on her prison.

"It won't work," a voice told her gently.

She looked beyond to see one of the aliens walking towards her.

"Believe me, I've already tried," he continued.

He stepped into view, and Hinata realized it was the Praetor who advised Executor Selendis. Up close, she could see he was heavily scarred all across his body. A particularly vicious looking scar went from just above his left eye across his forehead, and down the right side of his neck. He also had another wide scar going from his left shoulder all the way down the back of his hand.

"Remnants of particularly violent battles," he explained, noticing her staring.

"You ordered your people to attack my village," she couldn't keep the anger out of her voice.

"Under direct orders from my superior officer, yes," he nodded at her, "Had I had my way, there wouldn't have been such bloodshed. It is a petty waste of life to me."

Hinata was surprised; she had expected him to accuse her of instigating the whole conflict. The Praetor seemed to understand her thoughts.

"You and your friends were merely curious, that is understandable," he said, "It only became a problem when your people attacked us, and killed two of my zealots. Had that not occurred, this would not be happening. This entire episode is regrettable."

Hinata sat down in her cell again.

"Who are you? Why are you here?" she asked him.

"My name is Praetor Xelios. I admit, your people intrigue me. I have met many humans in my travels, but none that are like you," he told her.

Hinata nodded. She remembered what the scarred alien had told her just earlier.

"What do you mean, "you've already tried"?" she asked him.

The Praetor gave a heavy mental sigh.

"It is a long story."

Hinata leaned back, "I've got time."

The scarred alien made an amused noise, and if he could smile Hinata was sure he would have.

"Very well then. When I was younger, I was a bit of a troublemaker; constantly pulling pranks and getting into all sorts of trouble. Unfortunately, I grew too bold, and I went a little too far, and I ended up getting arrested. I was stuck in there for 6 years, so I had plenty of time to think about what I was doing with my life. When I was released, I decided to join the military, and became a zealot. For the last 300 years I have fought under the command of several of our race's finest heroes, like Tassadar, and Artanis. Eventually, during what was known as the Great War, I was promoted to the rank of Praetor, and since then I have led the royal zealot bodyguard of High Executor Selendis, serving as her advisor and head of security."

"You said it was a long story."

"That is an incredibly simplified version of it."

Hinata laughed slightly. The two of them, alien and shinobi, sat and talked for hours.

In Konoha….

Naruto walked through the hospital, looking at all the beds occupied with wounded. There were so many of them Sakura and her medical ninja were having trouble getting around to them all. Sakura had warned him not to move around too much right after he had finished healing, but he was the Hokage; he had to see the aftermath of the battle. In one of the wards he saw Rock Lee and Might Guy standing over one of the beds. Lady Tsunade had temporarily come out of retirement to assist in the healing, and was kneeling over the fallen body of Tenten.

Lee and Guy turned when he entered the room.

"Naruto! We returned from the Hidden Sand once we had heard about what had happened," Lee told him, "We are sorry we were unable to arrive sooner to help."

"It's ok Lee," Naruto told him before turning to Tsunade, "How is she?"

Tsunade looked up at him.

"She'll live, but her wound is serious. It will be at least a week before she will be able to leave the hospital," she said, "We were pretty lucky; if the aliens had put more into that attack, there would be a lot more than just 3 casualties."

Naruto sighed heavily, looking down at his fallen friend. First the Ten-Tails, now this. They had already lost Neji; were they about to lose someone else to this conflict? How bad was this going to get?

"Do you know where everyone else is?" he asked.

"Well," Guy looked at him, "Ino is attempting to interrogate the alien you and Kakashi managed to capture. Kakashi and Shikamaru are with her right now."

Naruto nodded, and headed out of the building. If they were going to get anything out of the bastard alien that hurt Kiba and Akamaru, he wanted to be there.

When he got there, Ino was already in a tense mental battle with the alien. The alien glared at them, and strained against the chains that immobilized him. Ino flinched and shook her head; the alien's mental barriers were too strong for her to get through. The captive zealot turned his burning eyes to Naruto.

"You," he glared with hateful intensity, "You should consider yourself lucky. I would have easily killed you had your white-haired friend not interfered. I thought leaders were supposed to be strong, not so weak they need to use their elders as a shield to protect themselves."

Naruto felt anger flare up inside him at that statement.

"You couldn't have killed me if you had an entire legion at you back," Naruto shot back at him, "If my sensei hadn't interfered, I would have torn you to shreds. You should feel lucky to still be alive."

Ino sat down tiredly while the two of them glared daggers at each other from across the room. The alien turned to her, her movement drawing his attention.

"Aw, what's the matter?" he said spitefully, "Did one of my brothers fight a little too rough for you?"

It was Ino's turn to glare at the alien this time; this alien was a total asshole. What she wouldn't give to smack him across his hateful face with Sakura's monster strength. Kakashi stepped forward.

"What is your name alien?" he asked the captive, "Why are your people even here?"

The alien turned his burning gaze to the masked ninja. The hateful stare diminished slightly, replaced by the closest thing to respect they had seen on the young alien's face.

"You," he addressed Kakashi, "You seem to be the only one worthy of respect out of all the terrans in this settlement. I am Thanatos, a royal zealot tasked with guarding the life of my Executor. If it wasn't obvious to begin with, clearly we crash-landed here."

"Why are you attacking us?"

"You attacked us first. We were willing to just leave you in peace, but no, you had to send your white-eyed warriors to attack us. They killed two of our zealots in cold blood, without even giving them the honor of facing them in direct combat."

'White-eyed warriors?' Naruto thought to himself.

Finally he understood; at last he knew what had happened. The Hyuga were the ones who started this. It made sense now; they must have tried to rescue Hinata against his orders. Naruto grew angry again.

"The Hyuga did this!" Naruto hissed with rage, "They were the ones who went against my orders; they're the ones who started this bloodshed!"

"Hmph. Not a very strong leader are you?" Thanatos's spiteful tone was back, "Can't even control the people under your command."

Naruto's hands curled into fists, seething with rage. Kakashi put his hand on his student's shoulder gently.

"Enough, Naruto," he said gently, "We'll deal with the Hyuga another day. Right now, we do have a more pressing matter at hand."

"You're right Kakashi-sensei. Shikamaru, come with me."

Shikamaru and Naruto left the room. Thanatos looked over at Kakashi.

"He uses the term 'sensei' when he speaks to you. I assume it is an honorific term. What does it mean?" he asked curiously.

"The term means teacher, or mentor," Kakashi answered.

"I see," Thanatos nodded and fell silent.

Naruto headed over to his office, where Sasuke and Shikamaru were waiting for him. When he got there, the two of them were already standing over a map table, planning the village's defense. They looked up as he entered the room.

"Naruto, we've gotten defenses placed all around the village finally, but these aliens are incredibly strong. I don't know that we can hold them back if they decide to attack again," Sasuke told him.

"Well, I just learned something that might help us out," Naruto told his advisors, "the Protoss value bravery and valor, and respect worthy foes. If we can push back, and prove ourselves to be tough opponents, we might be able to regain their respect to the point that we can reopen negotiations."

"All we have to do is devise a way to effectively fight them," Sasuke said, "But they outclass us in so many ways, how are we supposed to find a way to even the playing field?"

"I think I can help with that," Shikamaru looked up.

"Anything you can come up with would be of great help right now," Naruto told his friend.

"The zealots are much stronger than we are, and have much greater reach thanks to their height. However, from what I've seen, they're not capable of ranged combat at all. If we can use our speed to our advantage, we could take them out from a distance, before they close in for an attack."

"That is a good idea," Sasuke nodded, "So, how do we use that information?"

"We can sit here and defend all year long, but against such powerful and technologically advanced opponents, that's not a viable option. If we stay on the defensive the Protoss will pick us apart slowly, until we're all dead," Naruto told them matter-of-factly.

"What are you suggesting Naruto?" Shikamaru asked him.

"If we do nothing, they won't stop until we have nothing left to defend. We must attack them back, before they have a chance to do so."

"The Protoss have had ample time to thicken their defenses though. How are we supposed to punch through them?"

"There's something that I have a theory about to help with that," Shikamaru said, "From what has been described of their base by Kakashi-sensei and Sakura, there's a singular pattern I've noticed. Near all of their buildings, there is a large crystal floating nearby. If I'm right, they serve some sort of significant function; maybe support or power generation. If we can take those crystals out, I'm willing to bet their base will lose some of its defensive potential. "

"Alright then. Shikamaru, begin drawing up a plan of attack based on what we know. Sasuke, gather up a solid group of battle-ready shinobi, and make sure we have steady defenses all across the village. It's time we took this back under our control."

Onboard the Gantrithor…

Hinata was in the middle of teaching Xelios how to play chess; the scarred alien was fascinated by the game. The strategy and foresight needed to play the game was tremendous, and anyone who could play the game well now officially had his respect.

"So, the knight can only move 3 squares in one direction, then one more in another, like the letter 'L' in your alphabet?"

"Right, and it is the only piece that can move through your pieces, but it can't go through opponent's."

Xelios nodded; there were so many rules to remember and follow in this game. Hinata was just about to start a practice game when another alien ran up to them.

"Praetor, observers just detected a large terran force massing at the bottom of the slope outside our base. A counter-attack is imminent."

"How many are there?" Xelios looked up at the zealot.

"Around 40 terran shinobi are gathered near the entrance. The white-haired shinobi with the mask is with them."

Xelios's eyes narrowed slightly.

"I see. Ready a warp prism; I will be leading the defense myself."

"As you will, Praetor."


	7. Chapter 6: Once More Unto the Breach

**Chapter 6: Once More Unto the Breach**

Sasuke took a deep breath; looking up at the hill where he knew the aliens were waiting for them. He turned back to the group of shinobi behind him, who were gathering around Shikamaru.

"Okay, so, here's the plan," Shikamaru said in a low voice, "Half of us are going to rush up into the alien's base first, so we know what their defenses look like. Once we're up that hill, Sasuke, you and Kakashi-sensei take out those big crystals. Do you know how you're going to do that?"

"We're going to use Fireball jutsus," Kakashi nodded.

"Okay, that's good. Once the crystals are down, the other half of the attack force will bypass the hill completely, and simply jump up those cliffs to the side. While we're keeping the primary defensive force occupied, broadside them and just do as much damage as possible. Remember, if things start to go badly, retreat, and Naruto will use his shadow clones to cover our retreat. Everybody got it?"

The 40 shinobi all nodded. Naruto was already in Sage Mode, eager for some payback. Shikamaru put up 3 fingers. Silently he counted down, and the moment he reached zero, the first attack group began to charge up the hill with a fierce battle cry. Halfway up the hill, the floating gold orbs turned and focused in on the charging shinobi and began to fire big blue spheres of light at them. One struck a shinobi right in the chest, and the projectile burned a large hole straight through his flak jacket. He fell back down the hill with an agonized shout.

As they all rushed to the top of the hill, 3 of the Protoss sentry robots used their barrier jutsus, cutting the attack force by 7. The golden orbs, which were clearly cannons of some sort, were firing indiscriminately at them all.

"Kakashi-sensei, Sasuke, now!" Shikamaru ordered.

Kakashi and Sasuke made their hand seals as fast as possible. Simultaneously, 2 massive fireballs struck the giant crystals that were floating behind the cannons. Blue shields flared up around the crystals before failing, and the 2 crystals shattered. Immediately, the cannons stopped firing and ceased to float upon their platforms; they had lost all power. There was little time to celebrate however, as no less than a dozen Protoss zealots came charging towards them to avenge the blow to their defenses. As jutsus and kunai were launched into the zealot's ranks, Shikamaru gave the signal for Naruto and the second half of the attack force to begin their part of the raid.

With their own war cries, Naruto and the other shinobi leapt up and over the cliff, going completely around the defenses guarding the hill. They were met by a group of zealots, who looked completely shocked at their arrival. However, they quickly got over that shock, and activated their psionic blades, preparing for a charge. All except one that is. One of them stayed behind, directing the aliens. This one was much more heavily armored, with more ornate looking gold plates, and while he had the signature arm bracers of a zealot, he also had large extensions on top, that looked like some time of ranged weapon; probably a cannon of some sort.

The shinobi stopped running forward, and threw kunai, explosives, and jutsus into the ranks of the charging zealots. Several were felled, and disappeared in blue flames before they had even closed half the distance. Those that survived the onslaught quickly rushed in, and engaged the shinobi. The area quickly became a fierce battleground, as shinobi and zealots fought and died.

On the hill, Shikamaru directed his part of the battle with calm and skill only a veteran general could. He saw where the zealots were, and sent his own warriors to engage them appropriately. There weren't enough of them however, and slowly the zealots were pushing Shikamaru and his forces back. Even with Sasuke and Kakashi at his side, the aliens were still strong enough to hold back their offensive.

Through the battle, Shikamaru saw one of the zealots charging straight for him. He quickly crouched down, and caught the alien with his shadow stitching. Sasuke ran past, stabbing the zealot through the back, and he vanished in the blue flames. Shikamaru looked around; they were doing well enough thanks to the split, but the zealots were starting to form a semi-circle around him and his forces.

Praetor Xelios was surveying the battle intensely; the shinobi were smart. Using their superior agility and splitting their attack forces to keep his zealots in manageable groups was a very intelligent move. And the fact that they had completely analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of his forces using only the one battle as reference. Impressive.

"Great One!" one of his zealots looked at him, "The terrans are using their superior range to neutralize us before we have a chance to reach them. Our zealots cannot close in fast enough to do any significant damage."

"I see that. Fall back, and use the shield batteries to recharge. Draw them in, then have the stalkers blink behind them; choke off their escape route."

The zealot nodded, and gave the order to his brethren fighting nearby.

Sasuke fought hard against the aliens. Shikamaru's plan seemed to be working; the Protoss were retreating. The shinobi began to push into the Protoss base, well past the defensive perimeter.

Naruto and his forces were pushing into the base as well. They pushed the zealots past large golden arch-like buildings. They had odd blackish looking orbs hovering over the buildings, the arms of the buildings looked like they were holding the orbs up. Every now and then they'd glow with some type of energy for a second or two, before going silent again. The zealots continued to charge towards them, despite the fact that very few of them actually reached their targets.

Shikamaru started to grow suspicious; why were the zealots suddenly retreating so much? They were losing sure, but something didn't seem right. What were they up to?

"We should slow down our attack," he advised, "something doesn't seem right."

Kakashi and Sasuke nodded, and the shinobi began to move in more slowly, cautiously. They began to hear the click of metal on ground and stone. It sounded like something with metal limbs was heading towards them. As they looked around to see where the noise was coming from, but they couldn't see anything.

Xelios watched the shinobi as they moved through his now silent base. They knew something was up. Too late however, as he wordlessly gave the signal for his zealots to charge once more.

Shikamaru looked to see the aliens running through the buildings towards them yet again. They were on both sides; it was a pincer attack! He and his remaining shinobi turned to face their opponents again, but this time they were a bit too slow, and the zealots closed in on them before they had a chance to take them out. He quickly used his shadow stitching to immobilize 3 of the charging aliens, allowing Kakashi and Sasuke to kill them.

"Pull back!" Shikamaru ordered.

They started to do just that, but they were met with a very scary sight behind them. While they had been preoccupied, 7 metal ….. things had closed in behind them. They walked on 4 slender metal limbs, and had medium sized metal bodies. On their right side (left from the shinobi's point of view) was a medium-sized metal shield. The machine looked very agile, albeit, a little delicate. However the creepiest part of the machine: there was the head of a Protoss sticking out of the front, everything but its eyes covered by a shroud, and it had two smaller metallic limbs, one on either side of its head, not unlike the front limbs of a spider.

"For the reckoning!" one of them said.

Their voices sounded like a whisper spoken loudly; it was with the tone of a whisper, just as loud as normal speech.

They started to move forward towards the shinobi, shockingly faster than what they looked capable of. They paused a few paces away and began to fire blue bolts of light from a blue orb above its head. One struck a shinobi in the shoulder, and he stumbled back with a cry; a good-sized hole was burned through his flak jacket and into the flesh of his arm. Shikamaru tried to use the immobilize then destroy combo as he had on the zealots, but they were fast enough to avoid the shadow stitching.

Naruto saw his friends in combat on 3 sides. He had to get over there before they all got overrun. With a shout, he rallied his shinobi and rushed the zealots on Shikamaru's right side from behind. The zealots turned with shock before the jutsus tore through them all. In quick succession they all vanished with surprised cries of pain. Naruto found his friends, and his shinobi joined the rest of the attack force against the Protoss that flanked them.

Xelios saw the shinobi rejoining with their brethren. Together they made a formidable force that even his warriors had trouble containing. If his forces couldn't contain them, these shinobi were likely to wreak havoc across his base. He looked backwards, looking at the high templar and the rest of his forces that stood at his back. They all nodded their readiness at him. He nodded back, and they all prepared for a charge of their own.

Kakashi looked around at the battle; the Protoss were attacking them from 2 different angles. However, they were still doing pretty well; his fire-breath technique was found to be very effective against the Protoss zealots. However, suddenly there were these new machine warriors, which were proving very difficult to attack. Every time he tried to get close enough to do damage, the things danced out of range, firing their blue bolts as they did so. Not to mention their appearance was rather off putting – and here he thought the Ten-Tails was creepy looking. He turned at another yell. Another large group of Protoss zealots and their creepy machines were charging from the front, boxing them in in a 3-pronged attack! Leading them was the heavily armored zealot that looked like he had cannons on his arms.

Shikamaru saw the new wave of enemy reinforcements bearing down upon them, but they had nowhere to go. They were stuck inside the Protoss base, being attacked on 3 sides.

"Naruto!" Shikamaru yelled at his friend, "We need to retreat; we're badly outmatched."

Naruto nodded, throwing 2 of his famous Rasenshurikens. One struck a zealot in the chest, sending him flying backwards into one of the buildings. The other struck one of the metal machines blocking their retreat. The machine was blown apart into pieces. As some sort of energy dissipated into the air, they heard a faint 'finally.' from it. The other machines with heads however, did not appreciate that at all, and were now fighting even more aggressively.

Shikamaru finally managed to catch one of the metal machines with his shadow stitching, struggling to hold it in place. He yelled for Sasuke to destroy it, but just as Sasuke was about to, it just disappeared. Shikamaru's eyes widened in shock. He turned around to see that same machine towering over him. He realized these things could teleport as he dodged the blue bolts it shot at him.

Kakashi found himself at the edge of the battle, fighting 2 of the metal machines. He had broken the energy shield of one, and physically damaged the other, without being hurt himself. However, whenever he went to finish one of the 2 off, they vanished and reappeared several feet away, dodging any sort of finishing blow he threw at them.

Naruto saw through the battle, his teacher battling 2 of the machines. He tried to rush over there to assist his teacher, but a zealot and one of those machine things blocked his way. He had to get past them to assist Kakashi.

Sasuke saw two more Protoss coming towards the battle. These two were floating, and they had almost no armor. Sasuke wondered what these two could possible do; they didn't even have the arm bracers for the energy blades. Two of his shinobi charged them before he had a chance to stop them. The two Protoss observed the shinobi coming towards them, and simply raised their hands in response. Their palms glowed with power, and the two shinobi hit the ground. The pair of them had been drained of all their chakra, and they were killed by an explosion of their own energy.

Shikamaru saw this as well; he didn't want to see what other abilities these 2 new Protoss could use. He ordered a full retreat, and the shinobi began to pull back to the hill. They threw everything they had at the 2 machines that blocked their path, and the 2 of them were torn to shreds in seconds. The surviving shinobi started to go down the hill, but right at the bottom, suddenly there was a web of crackling lighting blocking the way. Naruto and Sasuke found themselves running through this web, dodging the lightning bolts that pummeled the ground all around them. Somehow, by some miracle of fate, they made it through unscathed, but 3 of the shinobi that followed were not so lucky. All three were struck by the bolts of lightning, and all three times it was fatal. When everyone passed through, they could see just how much damage the lightning web did; out the 29 shinobi that survived long enough to retreat, only 16 remained.

They all rushed back towards Konoha, but before they had gone more than 40 paces, the Protoss's golden transport machines sped right in front of them. A single zealot blocked their path. It was the heavily armored leader; his eyes clearly issued a challenge. Naruto's Sage Mode had ended, but he started forward, only to be stopped by his sensei.

"I'll handle this," Kakashi said without taking his eyes of the zealot, "You just make sure you get everyone home."

"You're not going to take him on all by yourself all by yourself are you?" Sasuke asked incredulously.

"Don't worry, I'll be fine," Kakashi assured them, "Now hurry up and get out of here."

The shinobi paused for a second, not wanting to abandon one of the village's greatest heroes. Kakashi glared at them all, and hesitantly, they all left. The Protoss that were pursuing them backed away and returned to their base, leaving the armored zealot and Kakashi to fight without interference.

Kakashi narrowed his eyes, and prepared for yet another fight. The zealot raised his armored bracer, pointing the cannon at him. Kakashi dodged to the side as a sphere of light just like those that the golden orbs back at the Protoss shot sailed past him. He threw several kunai with explosive tags to batter down the zealot's shields, but it didn't work. He hadn't expected it to; if the alien was so important that he had such heavy armor and armament, it was only to be expected that his shields would be heavier too.

He dodged as the zealot fired shot after shot at him. The missed shots blasted holes in the surrounding trees and ground. Kakashi knew that if a single shot hit him he was dead; he had to close the distance, keep his opponent from using the cannons at all costs. He rushed in, and attacked the alien with everything he had. Sword clashed against energy shield as the alien backed up against Kakashi's attacks. Kakashi was kicked in the chest, giving the zealot time to activate his psionic blades. However, he had two on each arm instead of one, and they looked not unlike claws.

Kakashi clashed with the zealot again and again, often damaging each other, but unable to truly cause harm. The zealot swiped at him twice, forcing him to back up, before shooting the cannon at his arm at him. Unable to move through the air fast enough, Kakashi avoided the shot by hiding underground.

Xelios looked around wildly; where did he go? Somehow, this shinobi had the ability to burrow, similar to the Zerg's burrowing abilities. He shot at the spot where the masked shinobi had disappeared underground, but he wasn't there; he had moved while underground. Xelios spun around in circles, trying to find the hiding shinobi. Too late, he heard the human emerge from the ground behind him, and suddenly there was a sword going through his chest.

"An impressive display," Xelios told his foe, "But I am a telepath. I know a mind-trick when I see one. Though, your, what do you call it? Genjutsu? It is skillfully executed."

"Thank you," Kakashi said calmly.

The genjutsu ended, and the 2 of them found themselves facing each other as they had started once more. Xelios activated his psionic blades again, and raised them for yet another clash. The 2 rushed each other, fighting with blinding speed. Xelios was impressed; he had never fought a terran so fast before. They disengaged quickly, and paused for a second's rest.

Kakashi studied his foe carefully; he was incredibly strong and fast despite his size. He had to bring down the alien's shields before he could actually defeat him, so how was he supposed to do that? He didn't want to reveal his best weapons just yet, but he needed to use some sort of heavy attacks to crack the Protoss zealot's defenses.

Xelios watched the shinobi as he backed up, out of range of his attacks, before starting to make stunningly fast, complicated hand signs. Before he had a chance to wonder what they were for, a huge burst of water emerged from nowhere around the masked shinobi. The water made the form of what looked like the creature known as a shark from the Terran homeworld. The hydro creature rushed at him, its mouth gaping wide. The thing's teeth were only made of water, but he didn't want to touch it anyways. He dodged to the side, only to be met by a massive funnel of flames that struck him head on. His shields flared drastically before failing, but it gave him enough time to get out of the funnel before it caused severe damage.

Kakashi rushed in, in an attempt to finish the zealot off with his personal tantō. The zealot quickly side-stepped the oncoming attack, and slashed him across the back, before stabbing him through the heart with his twin psi blades. Kakashi stopped, and burst into a puff of smoke. While the zealot was still in slight shock, the real Kakashi burst from the ground and managed to stab a tantō into the back of the zealot's shoulder.

Xelios grunted in surprise (and a little bit of pain) and twisted around to try and reach the shinobi behind him. The human was too agile though, and he easily slipped out of his reach. However, he wasn't fast enough to avoid the photon cannon shot he launched at him from point blank range immediately afterwards.

Kakashi quickly used his chakra to erect a shield around himself, just in time to deflect the burning sphere. The sphere broke the shield on impact, but he suffered no damage from it. He looked up though, to see the zealot's fist heading straight for his head. The blow caught in the side of the head, and he reeled to the side from the force of the impact. Another blow caught him in the back, and he saw 2 psi blades going through his stomach. Kakashi landed on his feet, and slumped forward from the wound.

Xelios relaxed, believing the duel to be over. After all, this human was a great fighter, a very skilled warrior, but even he couldn't withstand such a devastating wound, could he? Wrong. The shinobi had been playing him, as he realized when they wheeled around with a handful of some type of electrical attack. He jumped back, but not fast enough, as the attack pierced through even his heavy armor, and struck a few inches into his abdomen. He stumbled back, as the human straightened back up. The shinobi jumped up, flipping straight over his head. Xelios turned to face him, but the hand-held psionic storm hit him in the chest, creating a horizontal rend in his armor. Xelios quickly used the momentum of his body turning from the blow to fuel his own attack, and his psi blades caught Kakashi across his chest in return. The masked human hit the ground, finally defeated by the wounds he had sustained.

Xelios approached Kakashi slowly, preparing to finish off his opponent for good. But, no. Such a worthy opponent, such a skilled warrior did not deserve to die over such a petty misunderstanding as this. No, he deserved better than that. He signaled a warp prism to pick the both of them up, and return them to the Gantrithor.


	8. Chapter 7:: Exchange of Information

**Chapter 7: Exchange of Information **

Naruto fought hard not to give in to despair. 2 years ago it had been Neji, but now, he was the Hokage and yet he still couldn't prevent Hinata's capture, Tenten's near-death state, or the loss of his own teacher. This was a disaster. He was supposed to be the leader here, the beacon of hope and strength, and he was failing terribly. He looked up at the sound of his office door opening. Sasuke and Sakura stepped into the room.

"Hey," Sakura said gently, "We haven't seen much of you lately. Are you okay?"

"No," Naruto shook his head, "This is all going so wrong, and I'm supposed to be the one who keeps things from falling apart. How can I do that if I can't even keep the people of this village safe?"

"Don't beat yourself up about this," Sasuke told him, "This isn't something anyone's ever had to deal with before. How can you expect yourself to have a perfect way to deal with this if you've never even dreamed of it? Shikamaru couldn't even come up with a perfect plan, and you know how good the Nara clan is at that."

"None of this is because you're not good enough," Sakura told him firmly, "Not even the Fourth would have known what to do."

"I'm pretty sure the Fourth wouldn't have allowed his village to be put under siege for the last 3 days," Naruto responded.

"Stop it," Sasuke told his friend sternly, "Feeling sorry isn't going to help the situation. You're a great Hokage and everyone acknowledges it; you'll find a way to put a stop to this. We know you will."

"You've never given up before. Don't start now."

Naruto looked up at his friends.

"You're right. This isn't over yet. Gather everyone in Intelligence, and bring Sai over here too. With the ANBU in the mix, we might be able to gain an upper hand in this fight."

Sasuke and Sakura nodded with a smile, before leaving.

In the Gantrithor Medical Bay…

Kakashi opened his eyes slowly. What had happened? He couldn't remember anything. He must have blacked out after the fight. He looked up at an odd green and gold colored ceiling with its flashing lights. Where was he? Pretty sure the Konoha Hospital didn't look like that…. unless they redecorated while he was gone.

"Kakashi-sensei! You're finally awake! We were starting to get worried," he heard a voice say close by.

He turned to see Hinata standing over him, looking anxious.

"Hinata, you're okay!" Kakashi was delighted to see the missing girl.

"Yes, I'm fine. We were more worried about you. How are you feeling?"

"I think I'm okay," Kakashi tried to get up.

Hinata stopped him, shaking her head.

"Don't try to get up just yet; take it slow. Your wounds are still healing," she told him.

Kakashi slumped back down onto the bed he was laying on.

"How long was I out?" he asked her.

"Three days," she told him, "Xelios and I were starting to worry when you didn't wake up earlier."

"Who?"

"The zealot you fought with, his name is Xelios. He was beginning to worry he had wounded you too badly and you would never wake up."

"Huh, I see. Not to be rude, but why does he care? I am his enemy after all."

"Well, you did defeat his best student; honor demanded he test your abilities. I'm sure you'd want to fight whoever defeated Naruto, Sasuke, or Sakura. He holds you in pretty high esteem you know. You're one of the few shinobi he respects."

"Okay. Bring me up to speed; what's happened while I was out?"

"The Protoss are trying to batter Konoha into submission by putting them under siege. They've been building photon cannons and defenses all around the village, keeping Konoha locked down tight. Naruto and the others are putting up a good fight though; they've started to make Executor Selendis a bit frustrated by their tenacity."

"Well, it's good to know the others haven't given up the fight at least," Kakashi groaned as he sat up slowly.

Hinata watched him anxiously.

"Are you okay?" she asked him with concern.

"Yes, the wounds are just a little sore, that's all," Kakashi told her.

"If you think you can walk, you should follow me. The Praetor will be happy to know you're okay."

Kakashi nodded at the girl, and got to his feet slowly.

"All right, lead on," he said.

Hinata nodded, and she led him out of the medical bay. Down hallway after hallway, up ramp after ramp they went, steadily ascending the massive vessel. Every now and then they passed groups of Protoss, all of whom were busy repairing the ship, guarding, or transporting materials. They all nodded respectfully at the pair of them as they passed, before continuing with their work. Kakashi was surprised; if any of them were prisoners in Konoha they'd be locked up tight under 24 hour surveillance.

"Wait a moment, why are we allowed to just wander around freely like this? Aren't they concerned we'll try to escape?" he asked Hinata.

"No. They consider us more as guests than prisoners of war, so they show a lot more hospitality than normal. Besides, the ship is huge; the odds of actually finding a way out is pretty slim. Especially now that they've repaired all the tears in the ship's hull," she told him.

"You seem to know your way around it pretty well though."

"I was given a tour of the ship, and I'm allowed to go in most sections of it as I please. You get to know the place when you've spent so much time in it."

Hinata led him up one last ramp and into a large room with a ton of glass screens and a large table in the center. At least a dozen Protoss were working on the screens, and 2 more were at the table, clearly in conversation. Kakashi recognized these two: it was the female he had met during negotiations, Selendis, and the Praetor he had fought against earlier.

"Dozens of our zealots have been either gravely injured or killed in the last few attacks," Selendis was saying, "I'm just glad we recovered the technology required to give those that have fallen a second chance as Immortals. Wasn't it your expedition that recovered that technology Xelios?"

"It was. Though, if Zeratul's earlier expedition hadn't given me a foothold to begin with, and the Queen of Blades hadn't assimilated most of the feral Zerg on Aiur back into the Swarm, I doubt my expedition would have been a success."

"Regardless, we have the technology we need, and that's what matters. The minute we have our Robotics Facilities up and running again we should begin converting the willing volunteers into Immortals."

"I've already gotten the repair teams working on that right now."

"Good. I fear we will be needing them soon."

They broke off their conversation and looked up as the pair of humans entered the room. The closest thing to a smile a mouth-less alien could have appeared on the Praetor's face.

"Kakashi Hatake," Xelios greeted the masked ninja, "It's good to see you on your feet again. You had me worried for a while there."

"Well I try not to disappoint," Kakashi greeted the scarred alien.

Xelios walked over to them, and motioned for them to follow him.

"Come, allow me to show you the Gantrithor."

Kakashi nodded, and followed the Praetor with his hands in his pockets. Hinata looked at the seasoned shinobi; he had been awake for 20 minutes and already he was walking with the same mannerisms as he always did.

The 3 of them went on a long tour of the huge ship, visiting the ship's training rooms, workout rooms, observation decks, the ship's onboard library archive, and even a pool. Kakashi was surprised at the last one; since when did warships have pools? The tour ended in a large room with a lot of tables and chairs, with many Protoss around them all.

"This is one of the break rooms, for when crew members are off duty," Xelios explained.

Kakashi looked around; many of the Protoss were in pairs, playing some sort of board game.

"Is that shōgi they're playing?" Kakashi asked incredulously.

"Yes it is," Xelios looked like he would be smiling if he could, "Hinata taught us the game, and since then quite a few of the crew members have taken to playing it. I will admit, it is a very intriguing game. Do you play Kakashi? If you do, then I warn you: you should expect to be challenged quite a few times during your stay."

Back in Konoha…..

"Okay, is everybody here?" Naruto looked around at the faces that were gathered before him, "Good. First thing we need to discuss, is how are we going to deal with this siege?"

"I doubt we have the necessary manpower to deal with this on our own," Shikamaru had his arms folded, "We're going to need more people to help counter any other tricks the Protoss have up their sleeve."

"Good idea. Sasuke, send messages to both the Kazekage and the Mizukage requesting their aid."

"But, I thought the Mizukage was angry with us."

"That'll change the minute she reads that Kakashi's been captured, so make sure to put that in there."

Sasuke grinned as he nodded, then left the room.

"Now, we can't just sit around waiting for back-up to get here. We need to keep our enemy on their heels while we wait for the reinforcements to arrive," Shikamaru told them all.

"Agreed," Naruto nodded at them, "Ino, see if you Interrogation team has managed to get any information out of the zealot we captured. Sai, gather your ANBU squads, and tell them to prepare them for a major battle. Kiba, you and Shino gather every jōnin and chῡnin level shinobi you can find."

The 4 shinobi nodded, and also left the room. Naruto leaned back in his chair, sighing tiredly. He looked up at Sakura.

"How're your medical ninja doing?" he asked her, "are they able to keep up with everything that's going on?"

"Yes, they're doing fine," Sakura assured him, "With Lady Tsunade's help we've been able to keep our losses to a small number."

"That's good."

In the Interrogation Room Thanatos glared at the two shinobi who were trying to pry information from him. For 4 days straight these two humans had attempted again and again to break down his mental defenses. As if they could. What part of "I'm a telepath, I've been trained to block unfriendly entities from my mind since I was 5" didn't they understand? Fools.

'Now, let's see if my training has paid off,' Thanatos thought to himself.

His timing had to be perfect; a split-second late and the two shinobi would know something's up. He waited until the two interrogators started to attack his defenses again. As they did so, he began to allow his defense to weaken just slightly; enough for the humans to notice, but not enough for them to break through yet. The shinobi, believing they were finally starting to break down the barriers inside the young Protoss's mind, began to attack the barriers with more tenacity. Thanatos smiled inwardly. That's right you incompetent idiots, just give this all your focus.

Thanatos was patient. It was taking time, and a lot of concentration to keep the barriers weakened without letting them fall, but it was working. The foolish shinobi were just putting all their attention onto bringing down his mental defenses that they didn't even bother checking their own. These humans had the worst mental defenses he'd ever seen; he was silently gaining access to both of their minds without their notice simultaneously. How pathetic. And they professed to be good at this. Finally! Now their minds were his!

Instantly the pressure on his mind was gone, as he ripped their mental defenses aside. The pair of them could only stare in horror as he sifted through their thoughts and memories. Eagerly he found everything they knew about Konoha; its people, its defenses, and the capabilities of every single defender the pair of them knew about. Going literally at the speed of thought, it only took the young zealot a few seconds to gather all the information he wanted.

'Release me!' he ordered the shinobi.

The shinobi struggled against the command, but the zealot's hold on his mind was too strong. Unwillingly, he loosened the chains that bound the alien to the wall. For the first time in four days, Thanatos stretched his limbs, shaking the blood back into them. With a sweeping blow, he knocked the two interrogators off their feet and into the wall with a crunch.

"Naïve fools," he gloated contemptuously, "None can withstand the Templar!"

Ino walked over to the Interrogation Room; hopefully the two shinobi she had assigned to the alien had made some sort of progress. Come on, it had been four whole days. They had to have gotten something by now.

She opened the door to enter the room. Before the door was even fully open a bolt of what looked like lightning streaked towards her and hit her right in the stomach. The bolt's force lifted her clean off her feet and propelled her right into the wall behind her. It was a good thing Sakura had already finished healing her ribs, or that would have been exponentially more painful. She looked up slowly to see the zealot who had been in her custody an hour ago standing over her.

"Thank you for your cooperation," he told her gloatingly, "The information your associates have given me has been most helpful, and I promise it will be put to good use."

She glared hatefully at the alien in front of her.

"Oh don't worry, we'll see each other again soon. I need to repay you for your …. hospitality after all," he told her menacingly.

Before she could get up to stop him, Thanatos was off and running. No shinobi he met was able to stop him, and he sped past every single one without pause. It only took him a few minutes to circumvent the entirety of Konoha's defensive patrols and escape to the siege lines of his own race outside the walls.

Ino burst into the Hokage's office halfway through their strategy planning. Everyone looked up at her surprised.

"The zealot escaped!" she managed to gasp, "He's got all the information my Interrogation Squad had! The Protoss will have full knowledge of Konoha's defenses and the defenders within a few minutes!"

Naruto and Shikamaru gaped in shock. If there was such a thing as bad news, this was it.

"We no longer have time to set up a detailed attack," Shikamaru told everyone urgently, "If we don't act now the whole village is finished!"

"Shikamaru, do what you need to do. Grab everyone and provide as detailed as a strategy you can in the next 20 minutes," Naruto told his chief strategist.

"Right. Sasuke, prepare a squad of around 30 shinobi as fast as you can. Kiba, Shino, and Iruka-sensei need to do the same. Sakura, prepare as many of your medical ninja as you can spare. Sai, get as many of your ANBU squads that you can spare without risking thinning the village's defenses too. And get Captain Yamato out of retirement if you can. Lee, you and Choji are in charge of Konoha's defenses while we're gone. If things go bad, it's your job to keep this village and, more importantly, its people, safe. Move swiftly people, time is not on our side!"

Everyone spilled out of the room as fast as they could. Naruto and Shikamaru could see them all scrambling around the village to do as Shikamaru had just ordered. Shikamaru turned to his friend.

"You know, having to give orders like that can be such a drag sometimes."


	9. Chapter 8: Echoes of the Future

**Chapter 8: Echoes of the Future**

"Okay, Naruto and Sasuke, take your teams and smash right through the center lines," Shikamaru was giving out the final instructions, "Iruka-sensei, take your team and attack the left side to split their forces. Kiba, you'll be joining them in that area. Shino, you and I are going to attack the right side and keep the enemy from reinforcing any one position. With Sai attacking from the air, we'll hit them on 4 fronts in one go. Everybody got that?"

All 180 shinobi nodded at their commander. Shikamaru raised his hand in signal, and every shinobi pulled out their weapon of choice in response. With a deep breath, he brought his hand down as the signal to charge. As one the mass of ninjas charged towards the Protoss lines, splitting up as they went.

The Protoss defending the siege lines looked over at the sound of the approaching force. Immediately, they all ran to hold the line against the humans.

Kiba and Akamaru ran towards their enemies, their company of shinobi in tow. The first thing they saw was a grid of at least 9 floating gold orbs, powered by no less than 5 floating crystals whose power fields clearly overlapped. Even an idiot who know nothing about them could tell by the way they were positioned. Kiba knew that those things were automatic defense things that shot blue balls of burning light; if he didn't dodge them he was done for. All 9 of the things started to point towards his forces when they got within 30 feet, and started to fire nonstop at them. Kiba and Akamaru were able to use their agility to easily dodge around the burning spheres, but many of the shinobi behind him weren't so lucky.

On the exact opposite side of the siege line, Shino and Shikamaru found it was the same deal. The cannons fired shot after shot, taking out many of the shinobi under their command. Shikamaru grimaced slightly; he didn't have any sort of way to deal with the things effectively, and neither did Shino.

'Come on Sai, where's that back-up?' Shikamaru asked silently.

Right on cue, Sai's massive art birds flew overhead, carrying the ANBU teams on their backs.

"Concentrate all attacks on one cannon at a time!" Sai commanded.

A hail of kunai with explosive tags rained down on the golden spheres, swiftly overloading their shields. One by one, the cannons went down under the rain of explosives.

Xelios looked up at the giant white birds that flew overhead. They didn't look real; they looked more like a hand-drawn picture come to life. Regardless, the humans they carried were hostile, and who knows what powers the birds themselves might have.

"We don't have sufficient anti-air. Have the photon cannons and stalkers switch priorities; target those flyers first. Shoot them all down," he ordered.

Sai's eyes widened. All of the cannons and other ranged defenders had switched targets; instead of shooting at the 180 charging shinobi on the ground, they were now aiming for him and his 40 airborne ANBU. He and his forces quickly scattered as incoming projectiles sailed into their ranks. Sai veered to the left, avoiding two of the cannon's blue spheres, only to see one of his squad members shot down right in front of him.

"Evasive tactics!" he yelled, "Strafe them!"

Naruto looked up at the swarm of white birds circling overhead. They were constantly evading the different projectiles being shot at them, and throwing down explosives onto their enemies. Problem was, there weren't too many of them, and there were still quite a few Protoss shooting up at them. If the ground force didn't intervene soon, they were probably going to all be shot down.

"Push forwards!" he urged his shinobi.

He and Sasuke led a charge straight past the cannons and into the lines of zealots in between them. Naruto hit the one in front of him with a Rasengan, just as Sasuke used a fireball to force the rest to scatter to the sides.

Xelios looked around the field; the humans had decided to attack from all three sides at once. Their own forces were thinned out that way, but now he couldn't just focus all his forces to crush any single position. Plus, those flying ones were becoming quite a nuisance. Alright, now how to counter this particular strategy?

"Thanatos, take your forces and reinforce the center. High Templars, take a force of zealots and reinforce right, I'll take the rest and reinforce left. All sentries make hallucinations and guardian shields to help deal with all ranged attackers. Send word to the Gantrithor for them to prep phoenixes for launch to deal with the air force," he ordered.

Thanatos nodded at his mentor, and motioned to a large group of zealots and stalkers. As they headed towards the central section of the battlefield, he noticed the man with the yellow hair. It was the leader of the village, the one he had fought against earlier. It was time for a rematch, and there was no white-haired shinobi to save him this time!

Iruka had never fought against such opponents before; these Protoss were so much tougher than any human. If this is how strong the subordinates are, how strong must their leaders be? No wonder Kakashi wasn't able to beat their leader. No time to think about that now though, as a zealot swung its arm blade right at his head. Iruka ducked, and struck out at the zealot's exposed midsection. The shield stopped it, but it still made the alien back up, giving him some room to maneuver.

Kiba saw Iruka fighting a zealot as he and Akamaru took down one of their own. He was doing pretty well for someone who'd never fought one before. But he saw something that wasn't so good; 5 of those floaty death Protoss were heading straight for them, backed up by a ton of zealots and those creepy metal stalkers.

"Iruka-sensei! Get out of there!" Kiba yelled at the older ninja.

Iruka disengaged and jumped back into the main group of shinobi immediately. Kiba sighed slightly with relief. Immediately afterwards the high templar raised their glowing hands, and a large lightning storm suddenly struck the large group of shinobi. Kiba yelled in horror.

Across the battle, Shikamaru heard Kiba's yell, and looked at what was happening. The shinobi were crawling out of the storm of lightning, but almost none of them were capable of fighting anymore. Kiba and Iruka's battle group had just been annihilated in one move; 60 shinobi reduced to maybe 10 in one go. Shikamaru gasped in horror.

"Sai!" Shikamaru yelled at the ANBU captain flying overhead, "Assist Kiba and Iruka-sensei! Get them out of there!"

The remaining white birds wheeled around and headed for the left side of the battlefield. Sai nodded at Shikamaru as he flew past. The surviving shinobi were quickly loaded onto the birds, and flown to the field hospital Sakura's medical ninja had set up behind the battlefield.

Iruka found himself on a stretcher in the field hospital. He hadn't been struck by the lightning, but his mind felt like it had just been torn in two. Whatever that thing was, it can attack the mind too if it's strong enough.

With the loss of the entire left side of the battlefield, the Protoss were preparing to get a surround on the remaining shinobi. Naruto was fighting against 2 zealots at once when he saw the Protoss attempting to surround his people. He had to do something about that.

"Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu!" he concentrated his chakra into about 200 shadow clones.

At his command, the 200 shadow clones attacked the Protoss advancing from the left side, keeping them from surrounding everyone else. He turned back to find his 2 opponents had gone, retreated back into the battle. Standing before him was the young zealot Thanatos.

"You again!" Naruto glared at his alien rival.

"Me," Thanatos glared right back, "Let's see if you can match me now, without your friend to protect you!"

"Bring it on!" Naruto pulled out a kunai, "I'd have kicked your ass the first time if Kakashi-sensei hadn't beaten me to it, so I'll just finish kicking your ass this time!"

"Like you stand a chance!" Thanatos activated his psionic blades and charged the young Hokage.

Naruto laughed, and ducked under the zealot's swing.

"Rasengan Barrage!" Naruto hit Thanatos with not one, but two Rasengans at the same time. The twin attacks right in the chest sent Thanatos flying all the way across the battlefield, skipping off the ground like a stone over water. Thanatos got up slowly. His armor nearly broke from the impact! If he wasn't careful, the armor protecting his hearts might break, and he'd be done for. He looked up to see five kunai with explosive tags attached to them headed straight for him. Quickly he dodged to the side, and the kunai exploded well outside the battle zone. Ha, what a lousy shot. He looked up at yet another yell; Naruto was headed straight for him with another one of those annoying "Rasengans" in hand. Thanatos jumped clear over Naruto's head, and watched as his attack tore straight through a large tree. Hmmmmm; maybe the human wasn't so weak after all.

Across the field Shikamaru observed Naruto's clones battling the Protoss behind them. Once again his friend showed his mastery of the jutsu; the clones outnumbered the Protoss four to one. Still, the Protoss's shields and armor kept things closer to even than he'd like.

Sai circled around the battle overhead, sniping whatever enemies he could hit without fear of accidently striking one of his own shinobi. He threw 3 explosive tagged kunai at one of those creepy metal monsters, and watched with satisfaction as it had to teleport to get out of the way in time. It wasn't fast enough to dodge the second volley he launched immediately afterwards, and the explosion knocked the metal stalker onto its side. More stalkers quickly scuttled over to assist their fallen comrade.

"Doom atuhn nal'ra!" one of them spoke in their own language.

The group teleported right underneath Sai's bird, and started shooting at him. Sai dodged one shot, two shots, three shots. But the fourth, the stalker had shot in front of him, directly into his path. There was no time to dodge. The beam of light tore straight through the head of the bird, and Sai plummeted to the ground below. He hit the ground with a bone-cracking 'Thud!'. He looked up to see the stalkers surrounding him.

"Forever sleep!"

Shino was directing his bugs around the battlefield like crazy; attacking foe after foe. He was about to finish off yet another one when he heard the battle cry of another zealot behind him. He turned at the noise, but there was no way he would be able to react in time. Less than a foot from him though, the zealot froze with his arm still extended, completely immobilized. One of Shikamaru's chakra blades had pierced the alien's shadow, stopping him mere moments from killing Shino. Shino nodded his thanks at Shikamaru before proceeding to finish off his previous opponent.

Thanatos fought Naruto all through the base, never pausing for more than a second. The shinobi was different this time; he was more prepared, more determined. Thanatos had thought he had killed him several times, but each time it turned out to be a hallucination or a piece of wood that looked like him, or something. It was getting quite annoying; why wouldn't this idiot just die?! Thanatos hit the real one this time and sent him flying. The human flipped upright yet again, with yet another one of those Rasengans in his hand. The pair charged at each other, Rasengan and psionic blade extended towards the other.

Just then, a faint high-pitched shriek sounded from far through the trees. Thanatos froze halfway through his charge, causing Naruto to stop in surprise as well. Thanatos listened hard. There it was again! A faint cry of savagery, a bit closer this time.

"Oh no," Thanatos whispered mentally.

"What is it?" Naruto asked the alien.

This scared Naruto slightly; he didn't think the alien even understood the concept of fear, and yet there it was in his eyes. What could possibly be so terrible it scared even the fearless Thanatos? He listened for the sound again; was it getting closer?

"STOP!" Thanatos's mental voice resounded across the battlefield.

Instantly everyone and everything on the battlefield was still and silent. They all looked at him questioningly.

"Listen!"

The sound came through the trees again, even closer now. Accompanying it was the drumming of hundreds upon hundreds of feet hitting earth. There were more of the screaming cries now, full of a savage lust to kill. The eyes of every single Protoss on the field grew wide. Xelios moved to where his student and the Hokage stood; he knew that sound all too well.

"Protoss warriors! Terran shinobi! A grave threat approaches!"

The surviving zealots swiftly moved to their Praetor's position, making a long line. Thanatos moved in between 2 of these zealots, joining them. The metal stalkers quickly moved just behind the zealot lines. The Protoss motioned for the shinobi to back up behind them. All the while, the drumming of running feet grew closer and closer. The animal screams grew closer and closer, more frequent. Then at last, Naruto saw what was making that screaming. A massive horde of relatively small monstrous creatures, with huge claws extending from their backs was thundering towards them. They had small merciless eyes, and a curved tusk on either side of their mouth. The horde of them seemed limitless.

"Zerglings!" one of the Protoss yelled.

The massive horde of what was apparently known as zerglings definitely knew no fear as they threw themselves at the line of zealots. The merciless blades of the Protoss flashed out again and again, cutting down zergling after zergling, but there were so many that it didn't matter. The zealots were being forced back, or the monsters would gain a height advantage over them by climbing on top of the piles of their dead brethren.

One of the zealots wasn't fast enough though, and a zergling pounced on him, bringing him to the ground. The shield protected him long enough for him to kill the thing, but the damage was done; the abominations had an opening. The zerglings swarmed all around them, causing the cohesion of the defenders to fail. Naruto found himself fighting desperately to protect himself and his friends from these new monstrosities. Shikamaru was immobilizing and dispatching a dozen of them at a time; Shino's bugs were covering and killing more right next to him. Sasuke had just used his phoenix fire technique to burn at least 15 of the monsters. But none of this was enough.

"There's just too many of them!" Thanatos stated, sidestepping and beheading another charging enemy.

"All warriors, retreat!" Xelios ordered.

Naruto looked around the swarming battle. He watched a zealot get tackled and the claws brought down the shield while the warrior was on the ground. The zealot spiked the monster through one side of the head and out the other before shoving its dead body off of him, but three more pounced on him before he had a chance to get up. He stabbed one through the chest, and took off the leg of another before he burst into blue flames and disappeared.

Nearby, a small group of stalkers was holding their ground against the rising tide. Before they were overwhelmed, they teleported backwards to safer ground. Across the field, a small group of zealots and shinobi had been cut off, and were completely surrounded by the monstrous zerglings. The zealots and shinobi had the edge in strength, endurance, valor, and skill…. but in the end only sheer numbers mattered.

Xelios looked around; there was no way they had the numbers needed to hold. Wait, there were different shapes in the massive throngs of zerglings. There were heavily armored, squat ones with horns, and the serpent-like ones with the long blades for hands. Roaches and hydralisks were on their way. It was time to leave. Just as he thought that, a couple of worms with wings zoomed overhead; there were mutalisks too.

"Everyone, full retreat! Pull back to the village, the remaining photon cannons will hold back the Zerg long enough for us to escape!" Xelios commanded.

Every single Protoss and shinobi still standing obeyed instantly. The disorganized groups pulled back as fast as was possible, but the confusion the Zerg Swarm had caused was taking its toll.

Naruto was being buffeted back and forth by the jostling bodies of the fleeing humans and aliens. He darted in between them, but something caught his foot and he crashed to the dirt. He barely managed to shove his last remaining kunai into the throat of the zergling that had just tripped him. He turned over and scrambled to his knees. As he got up, a hand grabbed his shoulder and hauled him to his feet. It was Thanatos.

"Come on, quit lolling around! We need to get out of here now!" the alien told him.

Naruto nodded, and together they ran towards Konoha without a second glance back.

Onboard the Gantrithor Executor Selendis, Kakashi, and Hinata looked at the chaotic scene in horror. The observers that were hovering above the battle showed a gruesome picture; the entire area was riddled with the fallen bodies of all 3 races, and the rubble from the ruined structures the Protoss had built.

"Executor! The mutalisk flock is heading straight for the Gantrithor!" one of the crew members told her.

"Launch every functional phoenix and interceptor this ship has at once!" Selendis commanded, "Are the graviton catapults functional?"

"No Executor, the catapults still need a several parts replaced. They'll be ready in about 20 minutes."

"20 seconds is too long! Launch everything we've got now, before that flock even gets within range. All available stalkers, ascend to the roof of this ship and assist our fighters. Shoot the damn abominations out of the sky, show no mercy!"

"Perhaps I can be of assistance?" Kakashi offered, "I have several techniques that could help deal with those worms with wings."

Selendis looked directly at Kakashi.

"In light of the current circumstances, you are no longer our enemy. Any assistance you can provide would be most appreciated."

Kakashi nodded, and a zealot motioned for him to follow them to the roof.

Naruto and Thanatos were amongst the first to make it back to Konoha; the casualties that the two races had suffered were horrifically high. As everyone else made it in, Naruto gave the order to slam the gates shut.

"Stalkers, high templars, get onto the wall and defend this village!" Xelios ordered, "Humans, gather every single defender you have and prepare for the battle of your lives!"


	10. Chapter 9: Desperate Alliance

**Chapter 9: Desperate Alliance**

Kakashi threw a barrage of kunai at the mutalisks flying overhead. Several struck one all across side, and two tore through its wing. The flying worm shrieked in pain and sped away towards the trees. Kakashi repeated the process twice more, each with similar results. Just when he thought he was making progress, the first one flew back, spitting a vile looking worm thing at him. He moved to the side, and the worm hit the ship's hull.

"Kakashi," one of the stalkers looked over at him, "Mutalisks have very quickly regenerating tissues that allow them to heal much faster than normal. If you do not kill them within the first few attacks, they'll leave and return fully healed within a few minutes."

"Yeah, I noticed," Kakashi called back to them.

Another mutalisk spat yet another one of those worms, hitting a stalker right on its shield. The wurm bounced off and struck a second stalker that was fighting nearby.

"The mutalisk attacks with what is known as a 'glaive wurm'" a high templar told him, "When it hits something, it will ricochet off the target and aim for another one that is nearby. It is best to avoid them whenever possible."

Kakashi nodded. If that was the case, he was going to have to use something a little stronger than what he was using currently.

"Fire style, fireball jutsu!" Kakashi sent a massive fireball towards a knot of the flying creatures hovering over the stalkers. A few of them managed to fly out of the way, but the rest burned to a crisp in seconds.

With shrieks the rest turned and fled.

"Nicely done," the high templar told him.

Kakashi nodded his thanks at the floating alien.

In Konoha….

Naruto looked at the swarming mass of bodies that surrounded his beloved village. Their numbers seemed limitless; the massive horde stretched to the horizon. His shinobi all looked nervous. He didn't blame them; these things were unlike anything they had ever faced before. The Ten-Tails had been bad, but it was only a single massive monster, not a massive swarming horde of deadly monsters. And the big armored ones, roaches, and the snake-bodied hydralisks were easily twice as tall as they were. They hydralisks especially towered over even the Protoss.

"Templars, can you use your psionic storms to thin them out?" Xelios asked the floating Protoss next to him.

"We expended all our energy during the fight with the shinobi earlier, and any remaining energy was spent trying to stem the Zerg tide when they attacked. We will need some time to recuperate before we can do so again," one of them told him.

"I see," the Praetor looked back at the Zerg swarm closing in around them, "Rest for now, and regain your strength. The moment you are capable, we'll need your support."

Xelios moved over to where Naruto and his lieutenants were standing.

"My templars are unable to use their abilities to stop the Zerg currently. They must regain some of their strength before they will be able to aid in this fight," the scarred alien told the shinobi.

"Okay, it's like us with our chakra," Naruto looked over at him, "makes sense. We'll have to make do without them for now."

"Their psionic storms are powerful enough to break the Zerg's numbers with a single volley, but they need time to gather the energy needed to do so."

"Then we'll hold off the Zerg until your templars are ready."

Xelios nodded. These shinobi were brave to say the least. The only other human he had fought alongside with such bravery and determination was James Raynor, back on Char, and Aiur.

"Thanatos, take the zealots and make a line at the gate. If the Zerg break through it is your responsibility to keep them out of this settlement."

"As you command," the young zealot nodded at his mentor.

"Stalkers, support the shinobi on the walls; stop the Zerg from gaining entry."

"It shall be as you say," the stalkers nodded, joining the shinobi on the walls.

"Here they come!" a shinobi called out, pointing at the Zerg.

The Zerg swarm was charging towards the walls of Konoha at full speed. The stalkers opened fire, their particle disruptors cutting into the ranks of the charging aliens. The shinobi's jutsus and weaponry joined the stalkers' volley, doing even more damage. But there were too many for just one volley to stop; the Zerg continued their charge without slowing down at all. The defenders on the walls were only able to fire one more volley before the Zerg reached the walls below them.

A shinobi leaned forward to throw a kunai into the horde of aliens, but something hit him, throwing him backwards. A serrated spine, at least 30mm long, had punctured straight through his throat. Shikamaru looked out at the swarm. The serpentine hydralisks were to blame; flaps of muscle in their chests had pulled apart, leaving the upper carapace open and exposed. He had to duck quickly as volleys of serrated spines were shot straight out of the alien's chest at him. Okay, these aliens had achieved a whole new level of disgusting.

"Careful," a stalker told him, "Those spines are poisonous."

Shikamaru nodded.

The only good thing going for them was the fact that they had the advantage of a wall. They had a perfectly good view of the enemy below, but the enemy had difficulty reaching them. The shinobi on the walls simply had to duck a little after throwing something to avoid the volleys of spines that flew up at them in retaliation.

Naruto looked down at the zerglings underneath them. The vicious little beasts were throwing themselves at the wall trying to break it down, completely indifferent to any harm it caused them. A stalker moved forward to shoot the zerglings down, but after 2 shots a large glob of green goo hit the metal machine dead center. The machine's shields absorbed the glob of stuff, but the stuff that hit the ground started to sizzle. These armored roaches spat out globs of acid saliva apparently.

Through the throngs of Zerg, Xelios saw a group of green things heading towards the front line. A group of at least 20 luminescent green spheres were rolling through the Zerg swarms, heading straight for the main gate.

"Banelings!" he yelled a warning to his warriors, "Kill them all, quickly!"

Obediently, all the stalkers focused all their fire at the green monsters. One by one they were killed, acid exploding from their bodies as they died. Many of their fellow Zerg died with them, covered in the acid of the dead banelings. There were too many of them for the stalkers to decisively stop though, and Xelios watched in horror as they collided with the Konoha's main gate. The baneling's acid ate away the large gate, and by the time the last of the banelings slammed into it, the acid had disintegrated nearly the whole thing.

Thanatos and his zealots activated their psionic blades, prepared to keep their bitter foes out of the village at any cost. They all charged forward, and met the Zerg at the acid-destroyed gate. As the two races clashed, another battle started to get underway.

Sasuke looked up; a flock of those winged worms had joined the battle, and were swarming above the village. The remaining stalkers were forced to switch targets as the mutalisk flock descended upon them, spitting their glaive wurms at them. The shinobi turned to aid the stalkers in their battle against this new aerial enemy. Sasuke had to jump out of the way as one of the wurms split off after hitting one of the stalkers and headed for him. The wurm missed him, and gave the shinobi behind him a cut across the ribs.

Angry, Sasuke turned back to the flying worms; these things were possibly the ugliest bird things he had ever seen. Such ugliness couldn't possibly be allowed to live.

"Chidori!" Sasuke concentrated his chakra into a handful of lightning.

He launched himself high into the air, right towards the mutalisk whose attack had nearly hit him. His hand plunged straight through the worm's center, cutting it clean in half. He watched in satisfaction as the worm's lower half separated from the wings and fell to the ground. It was also slightly amusing to see the monster's wings continue to beat for a few seconds after being bisected before finally stopping and dropping to the ground after its other half.

He turned to see the rest of the flock heading straight for him. He blocked or dodged wurm after wurm as he descended back to earth. One of the mutalisks got too close, and Sasuke cut off its wing as it flew past. With a defiant shriek the dying alien spat one final wurm at him; a wurm that was too close for him to dodge. He watched in slow motion as the glaive wurm sped towards him, but an inch from hitting him, the air around it became distorted, and the wurm vanished.

"You're welcome," a voice told him.

Sasuke looked to see his old sensei, Kakashi, standing on a roof nearby. He was so surprised he nearly lost his balance when he landed. Sasuke immediately understood what had just happened: Kakashi had activated his Mangekyō Sharingan in order to use the Kamui technique to send the wurm into another dimension. He nodded his thanks to his sensei, and turned back to the mutalisk flock. He was just about to make another jump to engage them again, but Kakashi put his hand on his shoulder.

"Don't bother," Kakashi told him, "They've already been covered. We're needed here on the ground more."

Kakashi looked at the battle raging below them. The Protoss and shinobi were putting up a good fight, but the Zerg's numbers seemed limitless. Another mutalisk turned and made a beeline for the pair of them as they surveyed the situation. Sasuke looked over at his teacher, but Kakashi didn't even bat an eyelash. As the flying thing sped towards them, 2 beams of light intercepted it, blasting it into pieces. As chunks of mutalisk rained around them, a sleek, blue and gold machine blazed overhead. This machine was definitely bigger than the others Sasuke had ever seen, much more streamlined, and it even looked a bit like a flying bird. As another sped past, Sasuke saw a Protoss pilot through a glass canopy up in the front.

"Sha'zul du Templari!" the pilot saluted the shinobi before engaging the mutalisk flock. The pair of them were swiftly joined by 9 more just like them, along with around 20 smaller ships.

"Those are Protoss air fighters; they're called phoenixes. The smaller ones are automated robots created and launched by the carrier itself, called interceptors. They'll deal with the mutalisks, don't worry," Kakashi told Sasuke.

The pair of them jumped down from the roof, and rushed in to join the ground battle. Naruto, Shikamaru, and the others were already there, assisting the Protoss. Shikamaru was working in tandem with a pair of zealots; immobilizing the Zerg using his shadow stitching, and the zealots making short work of their helpless opponents. Lee was nearby, fighting a hydralisk all by himself. As Sasuke neared, Lee gave the hydralisk a crushing uppercut, breaking the huge monster's neck. The towering alien crashed to the ground, dead, but 2 zerglings simply jumped over the fallen hydralisk at him. Sasuke drew his sword and leapt over to help Lee take on the 2 aliens.

"We'll keep things locked down on this side," Sasuke told Kakashi, "You go help Naruto and the others."

Kakashi nodded, and started cutting his way through the battle.

Naruto used his shadow clones yet again to help even the odds. The combined weight of his shadow clones, his shinobi, and the Protoss they were actually pushing the Zerg back a little; the battle was actually outside Konoha's walls now. He looked over to where Thanatos and his zealots were battling.

A zergling rushed towards Thanatos, but he impaled it through the top of the head, pinning it to the ground. As another came at him, he cut off one of the monster's claws, then slashed the thing across the mouth with its own claw. A single blow from his other blade finished it off. A roach scuttled over to try and take down the young zealot, but it was no good. Thanatos jumped onto the roach's armored back, and hacked away at the armor until there was a large hole in it. With that he plunged a psionic blade into the massive gash he had created, stabbing straight through the roach's heart. He jumped off and attacked yet another enemy the minute he was sure the thing was dead.

Naruto marveled at the zealot's ferocity; it was even greater than that of his mentor. Xelios was a fierce fighter, but Thanatos exceeded him by far. As he watched, the zealot's attacks became more and more savage.

Thanatos stabbed a hydralisk with one of the blades, then stabbed with the other right next to the first. Naruto wasn't sure what he was doing at first, but Thanatos made it abundantly clear; he ripped through the hydralisk with both blades, splicing it clean in half. Yet another zergling tried to tackle him in retaliation, but Thanatos cut off its leg before stomping on it, crushing its skull. He looked up, and Naruto saw the zealot's face; there was nothing but cold fury and burning hatred in those eyes of his. They reminded him of how Sasuke once was a little.

Behind the battle Xelios surveyed the situation calmly. The defenders were doing quite well against the Zerg's sheer numbers, but he'd fought the Zerg enough times to know they wouldn't stop until every last one of them was dead. He turned to the high templars resting behind him.

"Are you ready?" he asked them.

The five of them nodded.

"Then it's now or never. Let's finish this."

"For Aiur!" the high templar focused all their strength into one final round of psionic storms.

Sasuke looked at the huge webs of lightning that were suddenly frying the Zerg where they stood. He was astounded by the raw power the templar's lightning jutsus had. The monstrous aliens turned and fled, as the lightning bolts tore them apart. By the time it was over at least 80% of the Zerg's attack force had been wiped out, more than half of which was done by the psionic storms alone.

"I can't believe it!" a shinobi said, relieved, "We actually won!"

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Thanatos told him, "This was no victory."

"What makes you say that?" Naruto asked him.

"Some of the Zerg survived," the zealot told him bluntly, "So long as a single Zerg on this planet still breathes, there is no such thing as victory."

Naruto looked at the zealot.

"I think you owe us a few explanations. I want to know how and why these things are here; everything was going perfectly fine before you showed up."

"Fine, whatever."

The two of them walked off, talking.

Kakashi strode over to where Xelios was standing.

"Your student reminds me very strongly of my own," Kakashi said, "Disrespectful to just about everyone, but eager to prove himself, and ambitious."

Xelios folded his arms.

"It is only to be expected. The boy is young; he only reached his 67th year 2 months ago."

"Only 67?" Kakashi asked incredulously, "I'm only 32, and I'm getting to be middle-aged already."

"Well, understand that the lifespan of a Protoss is exponentially longer than that of a human's. It is not uncommon for us to live 900 or even a thousand years. For us, 67 is considered very young, especially for a royal zealot in training."

"I see. How old are you then?"

"I? I am 409 years old."

"Wow."

The two of them were going to continue their conversation, but a call stopped them.

"Kakashi, Xelios, the leaders of both races are convening onboard the Gantrithor. You are expected to attend; make your way here as quickly as you can," Executor Selendis's voice echoed in their heads.

"As you command."

On the Gantrithor Bridge…

"Okay, what exactly are those things, and how did they get here?" Naruto demanded, "They threaten this village, so I need to know everything I can about them."

"These aliens are known as the Zerg," Selendis told him, "They have been our bitter foes for years now."

"Okay, now what's the story? How did they get here?"

"The same way we did," Xelios spoke up.

Naruto, Shikamaru, and Kakashi looked at the scarred alien.

"Do explain."

"We'll have to start at the very beginning."

Everybody nodded and sat down, waiting for the Praetor to continue.

"A few weeks back, one of our phoenix patrols detected a small Zerg hive on a barren moon a few star systems away from our current homeworld of Shakuras. We assumed the hive to be made of feral Zerg; a brood that did not return to the Zerg Swarm when it was reunited. However, we learned that these Zerg were being driven by a single overriding directive: to destroy all living Protoss in the galaxy. We originally thought a small force would be able to clean out this hive, and that would be the end of it, but we were wrong. What we thought was a small hive was actually just the surface part; what we hadn't realized was that there was a massive hive cluster in a large cavern underneath it. To deal with this threat, the Gantrithor II was dispatched to deal with it, but we weren't enough. We were joined by the fleets under the command of Dark Prelate Mohandar and Hierarch Artanis before we were able to penetrate deep enough into the hive. Once inside, we were able to exterminate the entire hive, and every living thing inside it, at a great cost."

"That doesn't exactly explain how you or the Zerg got here though," Shikamaru pressed.

"I was getting there. After we exterminated the hive, the ground force made its way back to the surface for extraction. Just as we were preparing to return to our ships though, the entire brood descended all around us. Caught unawares, the battle turned chaotic, and hundreds on both sides died. In the end, it became clear even the combined might of the Gantrithor and the two fleets would not be enough to defeat them all. In order for us to escape, Hierarch Artanis ordered his ship to engage a mass recall, linked with a psionic matrix to teleport us back to the safety of Shakuras. Just before the recall could be activated though, a group of flying Zerg, known as corrupters, managed to break through our lines and attack the Hierarch's ship. The psionic matrix must have been disrupted by the damage, because instead of recalling us, it created a worm hole, which pulled every occupant in the battle into it. The Gantrithor was on the edge of the battle, protecting our flank, so we were the first to be sucked in. That's how we ended up here, and that's how we're assuming the Zerg arrived here as well."

"Okay, now how do we stop the Zerg for good this time around?" Naruto asked.

"We need to destroy their hive clusters, down to the last structure. Doing so should throw the remaining Zerg into disarray, and we should have little trouble tracking down and killing the rest," Selendis told them.

"All right then, how do we do that?" Kakashi asked.

"Normally we would simply glass the infected area from orbit; burning out all traces of the Zerg. But we can't do that if the Gantrithor is grounded. Right now the only way to cleanse this land is to physically lay siege to the hive, and burn it all to the ground."

"Then where is their hive? Let's just get rid of it now, while they're weakened!" Shikamaru suggested.

"Before spore crawlers shot down our observer, we were able to see a fair portion of the hive, which lies east of here," Xelios pulled up a holographic map on the table, "They have constructed their hive upon a plateau, giving them the advantage of high ground."

"Okay, now let's go destroy it" Naruto said.

"Unfortunately it's not that simple. See those tentacle things at the entrance to the plateau?" Xelios pointed to a dozen tentacle-like creatures burrowed into the ground at the top of the hill up to the base, "Those are spine crawlers; they might not look too dangerous, but they can penetrate through even thick armor to impale hostiles. A dozen of them block the way up; we would die in droves before we breached that barrier."

"Well then what do we do?"

"If we can hold off the Zerg long enough, our engineers can repair our robotics facilities onboard this ship, giving us the technology we need to break the Zerg's defenses. All we need is time."

"I sent word to nearby villages to lend us aid," Naruto said, "The shinobi of the Sand and their Kazekage are on their way; they will be here in three days. With those reinforcements, plus whatever your engineers can come up with, we should be able to pull this off."

Xelios and Selendis nodded at him.

"Then it's decided," Selendis declared, "We will hold the Zerg swarm back until your friends arrive, and when they do, we will purify this world of the Zerg scourge together."


	11. Author's message

Author's Note:

Due to a barrage of messages and reviews saying "This person wouldn't say that." or "That thing doesn't do that." to the point that I'm starting to get annoyed, I'm going to take a little break to reaffirm everything I know about the game, and every little nuance of both races featured. When I'm done, the new chapter will come out as per usual. So when I continue, if something does something that doesn't happen **exactly** as they do in the game/lore, I planned it that way, and I do so for a reason.

Also, the question of "Why hasn't this person done this yet?" needs to be addressed as well. I've taken quite some time planning all this out, so if someone hasn't used their strongest ability, or something else like that, there is a reason for it. Please be patient, and they'll get there when they get there.


	12. Chapter 10: Zero Hour Day 1

Author's Note: Hello again everybody, finally back with the next chapter. So, things are back to normal now, unless someone starts to annoy me again with the comments I've addressed earlier. Tell me what you think, and if you have any ideas or suggestions for how I write and/or for the story, please feel free to message me or leave a review.

**Chapter 10: Zero Hour Day 1**

"The Zerg are being rather quiet today," Xelios looked out from the walls of Konoha, "That's never a good thing."

"Why not? If they're quiet shouldn't that mean they're hesitant to attack again?" Kakashi asked.

"The Zerg don't operate like that. Their ability to hatch entire swarms in a few days means they should be attacking constantly. The only reason they wouldn't be that I can think of is they're planning something new. My guess: the Zerg are pouring their resources into new mutations to make themselves more efficient, and probably new strains to bring to the field in their next assault."

"So we need to prepare for something new huh?"

"Yes, and thanks to the spore crawlers all around their hive cluster, my observers can't get in close enough to see what that new strain is. We'll simply have to react as quickly as we can to whatever it is that they send at us."

Kakashi looked over at the state of the village; several buildings had been damaged, and the area around the gate still needed to be cleared. Naruto had gotten Captain Yamato out of retirement, thank goodness. The captain had been quite helpful in the rebuilding of the gates, and the strengthening of the walls. Yamato had put on a layer of wood 2 feet thick to help prevent new banelings and other Zerg from breaking through it easily. At least they would be ready for whatever the Zerg threw at them next.

Naruto walked past the rows of injured shinobi; so many had been injured or killed in the last fight. Tsunade and Sakura had been working frantically all day long trying to heal all the wounded. Naruto looked down; Sai was on a field cot two rows over. He was covered in bandages; a medical ninja was tending to him.

"What happened to him?" Naruto inquired.

"He landed pretty hard when he was shot down, and he took a particle disruptor shot in the shoulder soon afterwards. Also, during the retreat, a hydralisk managed to hit him in the back, and two of his ANBU were only barely able to drag him out of there."

"Will he make it?"

"Yes, but he'll be out for a while. I doubt he'll be battle ready for quite some time."

Naruto nodded. A sigh escaped him; they had gone from one fight to another, and still more people were dying or being hurt for it. Hinata came to his side, and took his hand comfortingly; their reunion had been very emotional. Naruto gave her a small smile in gratitude.

"Don't lose hope," his fiancée told him, "We haven't lost yet. We're still alive, and the village still stands. If we're inventive, and courageous enough, we can beat even the strongest foes. We beat Obito and the Ten-Tails; we can beat the Zerg too."

"We'll need some sort of edge to win. Sheer numbers is their game; we'll be slaughtered if we try to play by their rules," Shikamaru walked over, "Plans and strategies are good and all, but we need tools and people to use them to make a plan work. We've got the people, so now we need weapons that can help us even the odds."

"I think I might be able to help with that," a voice said behind them.

Naruto and Hinata turned to see Tenten walking towards them; Kakashi and Praetor Xelios were right behind her.

"I'm not going to be getting into any battles for a while," she continued, "I'm still recovering, but I can still be of use. Weapons are my forte; give me a few days, and I can come up with weapons that will be more effective than you could possibly hope for."

"You humans have proven to be very resourceful in the past; your innovative skills would be most welcome," Xelios nodded at her, "I'll introduce you to the engineers; maybe the lot of you can come up with something clever."

Xelios motioned for her to follow him, and the two of them left the hospital. As they did, Thanatos and two of his zealots came up.

"I hope they can invent something useful. I've heard stories of how inventive you humans can be from my master during training. He was often pushing me to be as resourceful as his mentor, Tassadar, and his human friend James Raynor," Thanatos said.

"The Praetor has fought alongside humans before?" Naruto asked.

"And against them. He's told me many stories of his battles from the human capital world of Tarsonis, to the Zerg homeworld of Char, to our homeworld of Aiur, and even the human's new capital world of Korhal."

"Huh, wow," Naruto said, nodding as he and Hinata moved on to visit the other wounded.

Onboard the Gantrithor…

Kakashi stood at the window of the ship's top observation deck, looking out over the open terrain. He sat down, in the window's ledge, reading a book; the view from up here whenever he looked up was quite beautiful.

"So, I see you've taken a liking to the observation deck," Praetor Xelios walked over, "Tell me, why are you reading here on the ship instead of in your village?"

Kakashi closed the book.

"Well, I enjoy exploring the ship for one, and for two, my favorite reading spot has a lot of traffic underneath it currently, so I needed to find a new reading spot for now."

"I see. There is something that has me confused; why is it that most of you have normal eyes, but Hinata has pure white eyes, and the boy Sasuke has red and black eyes? Where we are from, humans have different colored eyes, but not to that degree."

"Oh, you're talking about the Byakugan, and the Sharingan. You see, some shinobi families are born with certain optical powers, which physically manifest themselves as the different types of eyes."

"I am curious, what are these powers?"

"Well, the Sharingan allows the user to copy any jutsu an opponent uses, so the wielder of the Sharingan usually has multiple techniques copied from many opponents. The Byakugan has a set of multiple abilities; they allow far-sight, seeing great distances without effort, as well as almost 360 degree vision. They can also use x-ray vision, allowing them to see their opponent's chakra points, which was a great advantage when we fought each other."

"Excellent, those abilities will prove most useful against the Zerg. The Zerg are constantly evolving and changing, so any type of advantage we can get needs to be utilized to its fullest."

Kakashi looked over at the scarred Praetor; the way he spoke just screamed experienced.

"Tell me Xelios, how many times have you fought against the Zerg before?" Kakashi asked him.

Xelios looked at Kakashi, slightly surprised; it had been a while since there was anyone who didn't know enough to be able to ask such a question and not appear unintelligent.

"I have fought against the Zerg in almost all major battles since the beginning of the Great War, and all the way to the end of the Brood War 4 years ago," he replied.

"The Great War and the Brood War? What happened during those wars?"

"We lost," the Praetor said simply, "Despite our best efforts, and for all our advanced technology, the Zerg proved to be more than a match for us. Their unlimited numbers and their unceasing ruthlessness crushed all opposition, and my race barely survived."

"How could your people have lost so badly that you barely survived?"

"During the Great War, our homeworld of Aiur was lost to the Swarm. The Zerg devastated the planet's surface, destroying our temples and cities, and slaughtering all in their path. Out of all those that lived on the planet, only 30% survived and managed to get off world."

"I'm sorry. I wish there was some way we could help," Kakashi said.

He felt slightly awkward at this; what were you supposed to say when someone tells you a vicious alien race came and slaughtered everyone they encountered on their homeworld and forced them to flee? Any response seemed hollow and inadequate.

"I know the pain of losing one's home," Xelios told him, "The hopelessness and despair of knowing you can never return to the place you lived your life …. it is something no one should have to suffer. I will not allow your people to feel this pain, even if it means the death of me."

"Considering we're not even part of your race, it's surprising that you would be willing to put the lives of your warriors on the line for us, even with that reason."

"The Executor I served under during the Great War, Executor Tassadar, once told me that all lives are worth saving. Whether those lives be Terran or Protoss should not, and does not matter. He died defending these ideals, and I will follow his example."

"I can see why they made you Praetor," Kakashi down at the Protoss base far below.

On the ground a line of bulky, golden machines were walking out of the camp and towards Konoha. They had 4 legs, what looked like pretty heavy armor, a top section that could easily fit a human inside, and two large arms. They all looked like big walking juggernauts.

"What are those things walking down there?" Kakashi asked Xelios.

Xelios walked over to the window to see what he was pointing at.

"Those are our Immortals; Protoss warriors that have fallen in battle have the option to have their remains placed into the robotic shells so they may continue to serve our people. Those that did were considered heroes; valiant warriors who dedicated everything they had and were to safeguard our race. They used to be called dragoons, but after the loss of the shrine that made them during the Brood War, we could no longer make them. The remaining dragoons were refitted to better serve our needs, and became the immortals," he explained.

"But you can't make more of them?"

"Until recently, the immortals were a dying breed of warrior; their numbers dwindled without any means of creating more. As they fell in battle one by one, we feared the noble warriors who had chosen to become immortals would become extinct. In a gamble to recover the technology, to ensure these mighty warriors did not go extinct and be lost to us forever, I led an expedition back to our shattered homeworld. We lost many brave warriors cleansing and defending the shrine, but we recovered the knowledge we needed, and Protoss on the Dark Templar homeworld of Shakuras built a new shrine in the capital. This ship now has such a shrine built into her, and it is fortunate that there is, because your shinobi have forced us to make dozens of new immortals. By the end of this conflict, it is likely the fallen here will become the next generation of dedicated heroes."

"So, what is their function exactly?"

"They provide heavy-fire support; their shields are specifically engineered to withstand powerful blows, and have heavy fire-power themselves. Their twin phase disruptors are extremely effective, as they will prove against the Swarm."

"You Protoss have a lot of tricks up your sleeves don't you."

"Oh don't worry; now that our robotics bay is back online, we'll have even more surprises on the way. We'll show the Zerg we're not easy prey soon enough."

The two of them stared out the window; the sun was just beginning to go down over the horizon. As the sun set, a patrol of phoenixes flew overhead. Back in Konoha, Naruto was relieved that the day had been less than eventful. The sun slipped behind the trees and was lost from view; the first day was over.

….

Miles away in the Zerg hive, a broodmother watched as her lieutenants performed their experiments. The Queen of Blades had created her for one sole purpose; to destroy the Protoss. Her brood would be prepared; they would serve again, and fulfill the wishes of their Queen. Her minions will slaughter every single Protoss on the planet, destroy their ships, and when they are done with that, this world will become part of the Swarm, just like all the others before it! Nothing will stand in their way; all will be assimilated into the Swarm, or they will die.


	13. Chapter 11: Zero Hour Day 2

**Chapter 11: Zero Hour Day 2**

Naruto looked out from the top of the Hokage building, looking out over his village. Everything was fully repaired; the village looked normal as ever. But the atmosphere of the place was radically different; the place seemed charged with tension and apprehension. The entire place felt like it was holding its breath, just waiting for some imminent occurrence.

A sound made him turn around. Thanatos joined him at the balcony, staring out over the village as well.

"Nothing still huh?" Naruto asked him.

"Nothing still," the zealot replied, "It's starting to worry the Executor. It's not like the Zerg to be late to a fight. They should have been attacking our position nonstop all this time."

"Kakashi and Xelios believe they're preparing something new to overwhelm us with."

"Hmph. Let them try; I will slaughter them all no matter what they come up with," Thanatos glared out to where they knew the Zerg hive lay, "I hope they bring their entire brood; I don't want to waste time tracking down any survivors."

Naruto looked over at the zealot; the hatred in his eyes – he had seen it before.

"Thanatos, why do you hate the Zerg so much?" Naruto asked him, "All your people do, but you seem to hate them more than any of them. Why?"

Thanatos looked at Naruto.

"If you are familiar with our history with the Zerg, I would think the answer would be obvious," he replied.

Naruto looked at the zealot; he had heard the story of the fall of Aiur from Executor Selendis. The Protoss had lost so much; at least he still had a home.

"Thanatos, what was your home like?" Naruto asked, "I know of it, but nothing about it."

Thanatos paused for a while.

"Our homeworld was a beautiful one; full of lush jungles and oceans. Temples to our ancient gods, the Xel'Naga, dotted the land. My people built a great civilization there, with gleaming cities that shone like beacons," Thanatos recollected, staring off into another time.

"It sounds like a lovely place."

"It was."

"What about your home? What was it like growing up for you?"

"My family lived near the Province of Scion; my father didn't want us to grow up in the city like he had, so he built a large manor on a hill overlooking the province's main city. It was a beautiful place; seven levels, not including the 3 spires that towered at least 4 levels above the top level's roof. My parents designed the whole building, from the exterior, to the power systems, to the entire interior design.

My mother was a templar archivist, so an entire wing was dedicated solely to her archives. The whole place was an open tower, stairs leading up from level to level all the way to the dome that covered it. I would spend hours just reading, balancing in a spot in the rafters at the edge of the dome. She also had a botanical garden covered in a glass canopy outside, where she grew all sorts of plants.

My father was a commander of one of our fleets, so he wasn't home a lot, but he still had a large 2 level study above the kitchens. I was never allowed in there though, so breaking in was a favorite pastime for me and my brother. It was the best home one could possibly ask for."

Naruto whistled a little. If that was how grand his home had been, how grand were the biggest and most impressive buildings on that planet? Captain Yamato would have had a seizure from sheer awe if he ever saw the planet's cities.

"So, did you always want to be a zealot, or did you become one because of the war?" Naruto asked him.

"I've always wanted to be a zealot, since my father was one when I was growing up; I wanted to be just like him. For years before I actually became one, my entire day was devoted to training for the day that I would become a true zealot. My brother and I would spar in the field behind our house, at the edge of the province's jungle. When I wasn't training with my brother, I was meditating. I had my own private meditation area; there was a river flowing through the property, right at the edge of the forest. I found a flat stone just big enough for me to meditate on, right in the middle of that river, at the very top of a waterfall. I used to love watching the sunset when I finished my daily routine."

Thanatos's eyes darkened, and that hatred came back into them.

"Then the Zerg invaded, and ripped every bit of that away."

"What happened?" Naruto looked at the zealot again.

"The province of Scion became a heavily contested battleground during the Great War. When the Zerg first invaded, my uncle led me, my brother, and our cousins to defend our home. By the time it was over, only me, my brother, and 2 of my cousins remained. For all our efforts, we were forced to flee, and my home was lost to us. By the time we retook the area, it was too late; our home was destroyed. Its spires had collapsed, caving in large sections of the roof. My mother's archives were decimated; almost everything in there that we could still access had been burned or ruined when we searched the place. Not even my mother's garden survived, there were still signs of fighting all around the shattered glass building. Out of the great construct what hadn't collapsed was destroyed beyond repair by fire or battle. Even if we could retake Aiur, we would never be able to remake it the way it was; my home is lost forever, save in my memory."

"I'm sorry," Naruto told him, "What did you do after that?"

"My cousins, my brother, and I joined Executor Tassadar in their fight against the Zerg. Both of my cousins fell in the assault against the cursed Overmind."

"What about your brother? Why isn't he here with you?"

"During the evacuation of Aiur, he shoved me through the warp gate to Shakuras, and stayed behind with Praetor Fenix when the Zerg attacked. He was not amongst the ones that returned."

"What about the rest of your family?"

"The Zerg raided the refugee camp they were camped in just before the battle against the Overmind. None of them were amongst the dead, but we never found a trace of them. My brother and I searched for them as we guarded the evacuation, but we never found them. I would like to believe they are out there somewhere, h iding, but the chance of that is slim."

"So, out of your entire family, you are the sole survivor?"

"I believe I am, though I am hoping it is not truly so."

"I am really sorry, dude," Naruto told him.

Man, this guy could swap stories with Sasuke about this sort of thing. If they got into an argument over it he might even win.

The 2 of them stared out across the village again. It seemed so peaceful from up here, not as tense as it felt on the ground. A patrol of 3 phoenixes flew overhead, ensuring the skies of Konoha stayed free of the menace of mutalisks. The whole day, flocks of mutalisks had been wheeling around on the horizon, probing the village and the Protoss base's defenses for weaknesses. So far they hadn't been foolish enough to directly engage their defenses yet, but it was only a matter of time before they did.

"Any sign of the Zerg?" Shikamaru walked over.

"Nothing. This is starting to make me uneasy; something should have happened by now," Thanatos replied, "Why aren't the Zerg attacking?"

"No idea, but at least it gives us more time to set up extra defenses for when they do get here," Shikamaru said, "We've managed to thicken the walls and gates, and we've got patrols all across the village now. When they attack, we'll be ready."

"Don't be so sure," Thanatos warned, "The Zerg are notorious for being unpredictable, as well as numberless. They adapt to situations very quickly."

"So I've been told," Shikamaru nodded.

2 hours later, deep in the main hive….

"Broodmother, your forces are assembled as you ordered," a Zerg queen told her leader.

The Broodmother turned away from the experiment the other queens were working on to look at them.

"Are the mutations for all of them completed?" she asked the queen.

"They are."

"Then we strike now, before the Terran reinforcements arrive. We will overrun the city's defenses, and begin taking this world for the Swarm!"

The queen bowed, and left the hive. It was time for the Swarm to make their move.

1 hour later

A shinobi burst into the Intelligence Headquarters, causing Shikamaru to look up in surprise.

"Sir! None of the north scout teams are reporting in; the whole northern side has gone dark!"

Another shinobi ran into the room.

"None of the scouting teams from the eastern or southern fronts are reporting in either. We've lost all communication with the front lines."

At that moment, the zealot tasked with relaying communications was given a message.

"Our scout teams have come under attack as well," he reported, "The Gantrithor's scanners are detecting Zerg biosignatures in the thousands."

Shikamaru told the shinobi to sound the alarm, and to prepare the city's defenses.

"Why didn't your observers warn us the Zerg were on the move?" Shikamaru asked the zealot.

"I…. have no idea. The observers should have detected any Zerg the second they moved out of their hive cluster, no matter whether they attempted to conceal themselves or not."

Shikamaru pondered this as he raced to alert Naruto and the others. He found his friend on the outer wall, next to a slumped Ino.

"You've heard?" he asked him.

Naruto nodded.

"Ino's using a hawk to scout the Zerg forces right now," Naruto explained the reason Ino was slumped against the wall.

Her eyes flew open, and Shikamaru helped her up. As he did, Sasuke and Sakura ran up, followed by Choji, Lee, and Hinata.

"What did you see?" Naruto asked Ino.

"The Zerg are massing all around us," she told them, "We're completely surrounded. The Protoss are in a similar situation. Strange though…."

"What's strange?" Sakura asked her.

"I saw zerglings that were bigger than the others, with big things that look like they could be wings. And some of the hydralisks are bigger too. I also saw banelings, but the odd thing is, there's not a single roach in the entire force."

Praetor Xelios and Thanatos ran up in time to hear that last part.

"Are there any new strains in the horde?" Xelios asked.

"None that I could see," Ino shook her head.

Xelios's eyes narrowed; that was the exact opposite of what he was expecting. No, they had something – the Zerg just hadn't revealed it yet.

The defenders lined the walls, Protoss and shinobi alike. Naruto looked around at the people defending his village; the number of stalkers had dwindled to almost none. The village's ranged defense would be relying almost solely on his shinobi. Hopefully Tenten and the engineers had come up with something by now.

Tenten was tinkering with a Protoss machine when she heard footsteps running into the robotics bay. She looked down from her perch above the machine to see a shinobi messenger skidding to a halt, panting. She and the engineers looked at him inquisitively.

"The village …. and the base – they're under attack," the shinobi told them panting, "The Executor and the Hokage…. are ordering all available war machines into the fight."

Tenten looked at him aghast.

"No! No! No!" she shook her head, "It's too soon; the experimental models aren't ready yet!"

"Then send whatever you do have; we need any extra firepower we can get."

Tenten looked up at the towering machine that stood behind her. The engineers looked at it too, knowing what she was thinking.

"They'll just have to be sent out the way they are," one of them said, "There's no time to do anything more to them now."

Tenten bit her lip and nodded.

"Okay, bring them online. We're cutting our way through the Zerg to Konoha with them," she ordered.

The huge towering machines lit up, beeping and clicking in their robotic language. Tenten still marveled at the sheer size of the metal robots; the Protoss really knew how to build things, especially weapons. She jumped up onto a small metal spot between one of the legs and its pivotal waist.

In Konoha, the defenders prepared for the inevitable Zerg charge. But it didn't happen; the Zerg just stood there, snarling and screaming at those on the walls. Naruto wondered what they were waiting for; they could just attack any time, so why weren't they? The answer was made clear soon enough.

Without warning, a huge flock of mutalisks was suddenly overhead, spitting their vile glaive wurms indiscriminately at them. The shinobi and Protoss were caught completely off-guard, and the defenders were in chaos trying to defend against the flying horrors. Without a significant number of defenders truly capable of fighting against them though, the mutalisks wreaked havoc almost completely unhindered.

This is what the Zerg on the ground had been waiting for – with savage screams the huge masses of them charged at the walls. Naruto and the others weren't worried about them as much at first; they couldn't reach them up on the walls, and the mutalisks were more of a threat at that point. Naruto paid them little attention until a shape flew past him. He turned to see what it was, and saw a zergling on the wall next to him. He kicked it off, and sent it plummeting to the ground below. Another zergling leaped, leaped, up the wall, catching a shinobi as it sailed over, sending them both to the ground below.

"Since when do zerglings jump?" Naruto yelled.

"They don't," Xelios said grimly, "This is the first time I've ever seen it."

The Praetor punched a zergling leaping at him without even activating his psionic claws, sending it flying off with a broken neck. A quick spin, and he shot another one mid-jump with his photon cannon, causing it to sail parallel to the wall before knocking into a third zergling that just jumped.

"Still, it matters little," he continued more calmly, "We will prevail either way."

The fighting escalated as more and more zerglings leapt onto the walls to engage the defending shinobi and Protoss. It wasn't long before the whole wall was engulfed by a huge mass of thrashing bodies. In the middle of it all, Sasuke and Naruto fought back to back against the seemingly endless horde of the monsters. All the while, the hydralisks fired their spines into the huge crowd, hitting friend and foe alike without mercy. A group of phoenixes arrived from the Protoss base, having cut their way through the Zerg lines, just as the sun began to set.

"It's going to be a long night isn't it?" Sasuke commented to his friends.

Naruto and Sakura nodded grimly as they fought on. Slowly, the sun slipped away over the horizon, leaving the embattled city in darkness.


	14. Chapter 12: Zero Hour Salvation

**Chapter 12: Zero Hour: Salvation**

Light bathed Konoha, revealing the village in all its color. Yet, the moon was still perched high above them, and the sun had yet to awaken. The light that illuminated the village was the burning light of fire. Some of the shinobi's fire jutsus had missed, and several buildings were now aflame. And yet, through all of it, the fighting on the walls had not abated. Zerglings continued to leap onto the walls, and the defending shinobi and Protoss continued to repel them.

Naruto looked over at his friends, Sasuke and Sakura. For 2 straight hours they had been fighting on the walls, and for 2 straight hours their actions had changed nothing. Zerglings leapt over the walls still, and despite the hundreds of dead Zerg on both sides of the wall, they refused to give up. It was like the enemy's numbers were truly infinite, while the number of defenders slowly dwindled by the minute.

Sasuke stuck his sword through the throat of one of his opponents, before using his Chidori to cut through another. But it made little difference; there were still so many more. He ducked as a volley of spines flew overhead. As the battle continued, a small group of shinobi fought their way over to Sasuke and the other two. They had a brief exchange, still fighting without pause.

"The Zerg are attacking the main gate," one of the shinobi reported to them, "The number of troops guarding it are being overwhelmed. Shikamaru requests your immediate assistance."

"What of this location here?" Naruto asked, "We can't just leave a gap in the wall's defenses."

"We have that covered Lord Hokage. Go; we'll handle the Zerg here," another shinobi assured them.

The three of them nodded and sped off.

"May luck be with you," Naruto said as he left the shinobi behind.

The three friends raced through the village towards the main gate. Down an alley, then into a main road, before several shapes jumped down from the buildings to block their path. Zerglings that had broken through the front lines were barring them from Shikamaru's position. The group of them started edging towards the 3 shinobi, teeth bared in what looked like a hungry grin. With a snarl one of the zerglings leapt forward, towards them. Sakura sent it flying through a building with a punch.

The rest of the pack rushed in, intent on ripping the shinobi apart. One of them jumped a good 12 feet into the air, high above the rest of its pack. Sasuke jumped up to meet it, and the pair of them met in midair. Both of them landed on opposite sides from where they had begun. One landed on their feet; the zergling hit the ground with a dull 'thud'. Naruto and Sakura finished dispatching the remaining zerglings, before continuing down the road to their destination.

When they arrived at the main gate, Shikamaru and his forces greeted them.

"You're here. Good," Shikamaru looked slightly relieved.

"What's the situation?" Naruto asked him.

"The Zerg are attempting to break down the gate again. We were able to stop the wave of banelings that came first, but the zerglings and hydralisks are proving to be a bit harder to deal with," Shikamaru replied, "The zerglings might not do much individually, but their numbers is more than making up for that. My shinobi tried to clear them out, but the hydralisks are keeping us pinned down, so all we're doing is trading shots, waiting for them to break the gate down."

"Okay, so how do we help?" Sakura asked.

"Attempting to go over the wall and dealing with the hydralisks would be suicide, so I'm not even going to suggest that idea. The only thing that can be done at this point is to help us out when the Zerg get through the gate."

"Just wait until they get here, then deal with them as best we can?" Sasuke looked at his friend incredulously, "That's not exactly the typical Shikamaru Nara plan."

"There's nothing else we can do. The hydralisks would tear you apart the minute you poked your heads over the wall, and even if you could dodge them there's too many for you to deal with in one go. If you have any better ideas, I'd love to hear them."

As he spoke, a small group of phoenixes flew overhead, engaged in an aerial dogfight over the village. The phoenixes were outmaneuvering the mutalisks at every turn, and the flocks of mutalisks were clearly suffering for it. However, there were so many of the flying horrors, and only half a dozen phoenixes to combat them. One of the phoenixes was surrounded, and a glaive wurm struck the ship right in the portside engine. The damaged craft swiftly lost altitude, and crashed somewhere within the village.

Another group of mutalisks harried the small group of Protoss fighters out over the wall, towards the hordes of Zerg. Unable to escape in time, one of the ships was struck by several volleys of hydralisk spines. With an entire side of the craft damaged beyond repair, the phoenix went into a death spiral. In a last ditch effort to deal a bit more damage, the pilot directed his spiraling craft straight into the group of hydralisks that had shot him down. The hydralisks were nowhere near fast enough to escape, and every one of them died in the resulting explosion.

"See what I mean?" Shikamaru pointed at what had just happened, "There's just too many too deal with at this point."

Their attention was drawn back to the gate when a loud crack sounded from it. The gate had large cracks spreading across its surface, and every now and then a claw would break through. They could see the zerglings frantically trying to tear apart the giant wooden gate, teeth and claws ripping at the wood without any thought to their own well-being. It wasn't long before the zergling's front legs were clawing through the splintered wood at them.

"Get ready," Shikamaru pulled out a kunai from his belt, "here they come."

The zerglings finally tore through the last layer of the gate with cries of triumph. In a giant wave the vicious creatures ran towards the defenders, whose numbers looked pathetically small in comparison. Despite being outnumbered 7 to 1, the zealots and shinobi stood their ground. The two groups clashed with each other, making a large line of fighting all the way across the road. The zealots held their own, preventing the first waves of zerglings from getting past, but the waves after them simply jumped over their heads, landing in front of, or on, the shinobi behind them. For all the discipline and training the defenders had, their lines quickly became a chaotic mess. The zerglings proved so agile the defenders couldn't hold their position without fear of being ripped apart.

Shikamaru jumped to the side dodging a pouncing enemy, then used his shadow-stitching to bind it in place. Taking advantage of its immobility, Sasuke quickly stabbed the alien through the head. Another small group of the little monsters ran at them, forcing the pair of them to repeat the process a second time.

Naruto looked around the battle; there were too many enemies for them to deal with. Perhaps now was the time to finally use his new techniques. His hands moved to make the hand seals necessary.

"Wind style! Wind thief jutsu!"

A group of zerglings that were charging towards him suddenly stopped, and keeled over. They all frantically tried to breathe, but they couldn't; there was no air around them to breathe. Feebly, the aliens tried to stand, but to no avail. They twitched a few more times before dying of suffocation.

"Good thing you tried that with zerglings first, before trying it on mutalisks. The Zerg fliers don't really need to breathe, so that probably won't work on anything other than ground forces," a zealot commented on it.

"Still, nice jutsu," Sasuke admired, "Mind if I borrow that?"

"Yes."

"Oh gee, that's disappointing. I was so looking forward to copying that. Oh wait – I already did."

Naruto glared at his best friend, before continuing the battle. The skirmish lasted for what seemed like an hour before the last zergling fell. Shikamaru had immobilized it, and Sakura had kicked it right out of the village. Their little victory had come at a heavy cost; Only 5 shinobi were still standing, and only 3 zealots. Shikamaru bent down to check one of his lieutenants for life signs – he was alive, but no longer in any condition to fight. Sakura knelt down to heal the fallen shinobi, while the others took up defensive positions around her. As she worked, another shinobi came running through the city towards them.

"Sir, the Zerg have breached the southern wall," the ninja gave them a message, "The village's surviving defenders are falling back to a secondary defensive position."

Naruto looked over at his chief strategist.

"What should we do?" he asked him.

"We need to bottleneck the Zerg; get them into a chokepoint. If we can barricade ourselves into a more defensible location, we may be able to hold out long enough. We bring up defenses strong enough in a smaller location, we can stop the banelings and zerglings more easily. With a thick enough wall that allows us to attack out without leaving ourselves exposed, the hydralisks won't be as much of a threat either," Shikamaru told them.

"Okay, how do we do that?" Sakura asked him.

"We retreat further into the village," Shikamaru pointed down the road, "We bring up rock barricades with openings so we can fire out at the Zerg. If we can get into a crossroad section, we can block off the roads leading in, and stop the Zerg from there."

"Alright, if we're going to do that we should –." Sakura began, but she never got to finish the statement.

Right in the main gate entrance, a huge host of pulsing green eggs burst out of the ground and landed in front of them. The shinobi and Protoss backed up. The eggs pulsed for another second or two, and then burst open. From each egg burst forth a human. No. Not human. Not anymore.

These humans were grotesquely altered; some had tentacles sprouting from their body, others had thick bone-like horns or spikes. Naruto noticed that every single one of them had bone-like growth covering their hands, turning their fingers into long deadly claws.

"What the hell are those?" Naruto backed up, horrified at the new monstrosities.

Sakura noticed that some of them had headbands with the Konoha symbol on them.

"Are-are those shinobi?" she asked.

"They're infested," one of the zealots told them, "the Zerg have altered them to be slaves to the Swarm."

"Diiiiieeee," one of the infested moaned at them.

The horde slowly pulled out kunai from their belts, which somehow they had not lost. They raised them slowly, preparing to throw them at Naruto and the others. With sudden speed, the infested threw the blades at them, faster than the shinobi and Protoss expected. Naruto and the others managed to dodge the volley, but one of the shinobi was not so lucky. The unlucky ninja lay bleeding in the road, his body pierced by half a dozen kunai.

"Must ….. kill…" another infested said slowly.

"There's too many of them," Shikamaru said, "Run!"

They turned to run, but something came out of the ground in front of the infested as they did. This new thing looked like a massive insect, with many legs, a squat body, and worm-like tentacle coming from what looked like its mouth. The thing spat a nasty green goo at them, catching them before they could flee. Sasuke found that he was unable to get out of the slime, and that it was eating at his armor. He did however still have the ability to use his hands, as he was glad to discover when launching a fireball at this new enemy. The fireball nearly hit the thing, but the insect-like Zerg burrowed back underground just before it reached it. The fireball sailed over the spot where the thing was burrowed before smashing into the horde of infested shinobi.

They turned to run again, but the Zerg insect unburrowed and spat that green goo at them again. Its aim was off this time around, but it still caught 2 of the shinobi and one of the zealots.

"Go on without us!" one of the shinobi yelled at them.

The ninja would have said more, but a volley of kunai from the infested silenced him before he got the chance. Naruto and the other survivors did as the fallen shinobi said, and fled down the road as fast as they could.

"Shikamaru," Naruto looked over at his friend as they ran, "You need to get down to the southern wall and take command – keep them from falling apart. Sasuke, get back to the main gate and have everybody retreat to a more defensible location. Sakura, do the same with the north wall. I'll rally whatever surviving defenders I can find and disrupt the Zerg advance as best I can."

"Good luck," Sasuke nodded at his friends, "Try not to die will you?"

Naruto nodded. As he ran, he cursed himself silently. He should have just used Kurama's power and wiped out the Zerg before they even got to the walls! Now it was too late; the Kyuubi would do more harm than good with the Zerg inside the village now. That was a mistake he was not going to make a second time.

On the Gantrithor bridge…

Executor Selendis paced up and down the bridge of her supercarrier.

"Status report," she demanded.

"The Zerg's attacks on our base have started to abate," one of the Protoss told her, "The new zerglings that can jump up the cliffs into our base caused a fair amount of damage, but we cleared them out before they could do any significant damage."

"What of the Terrans? How are their defenses holding?"

"The Zerg have overwhelmed the outer walls; the Terrans and our standing forces have been pushed back deeper into the city."

"Where are our forces? They should be aiding the Terrans in this fight."

"They are. Praetor Xelios has taken command of the remainder of our forces in the eastern quadrant and is leading the entrenched defenders alongside the Terran Kakashi. The Praetor's student, Thanatos, has taken his zealots to reinforce the southern wall, which is the weakest point in the village's defenses."

"Then we must send them as much aid as we can spare."

"The shinobi weapons master, Tenten, reactivated our war machines just before the Zerg attacked. She has broken through the Zerg lines with the 5 functional ones, and is headed for the northern wall. Their ETA is approximately 25 minutes."

"Good."

Near the southern wall of Konoha, Shikamaru joined up with the remaining defenders. He met the zealot Thanatos and his forces along the way, and the group of them rallied all the shinobi and Protoss they could find.

"Good to see you still alive," Shikamaru nodded at the young Protoss.

"And you as well," Thanatos nodded back, "What's the plan?"

"We need to set up a defensive perimeter in that square down this road," Shikamaru pointed down one of the streets.

Thanatos nodded, and motioned for everyone to head down the road Shikamaru had pointed to. The whole group ran down the alley, and began setting up for a long siege. They could already hear the screams of the Zerg behind them.

"Hey, commander? Why is the ground so lumpy over here?" a shinobi called out.

"Probably just aftermath from earlier in the battle," another said dismissively.

Shikamaru had his doubts though, and told them to keep an eye on the ground whenever they could.

Near the main gate, Sasuke had joined the fight alongside his former sensei and the scarred Praetor. They too had discovered lumps beneath their feet, but were too busy to really take heed to them. The battle near the main gate was still the fiercest of them all; with hydralisks and now hordes of infested shinobi constantly attacking their position. Xelios and Kakashi were wreaking havoc amongst the ranks of the infested, cutting them down faster than the eye could see.

Suddenly, Sasuke felt the ground shift beneath his feet. He backed up, and the ground burst open, a large shape clawing its way out of the ground. The thing was squat and low to the ground, well armored, and had large horns upon its head. It was a roach.

'Oh, so that's where they were,' Sasuke realized the Zerg's roaches had been burrowed beneath them the whole time.

He jumped on top of the armored Zerg, and plunged his sword straight through its back. As a finishing touch, he channeled a chidori through the blade, and directed it straight into the roach's heart. He looked up to see more roaches all over inside the defensive perimeter. With an enraged yell he leapt forward to save his fellow shinobi from this new threat.

Sakura opened her eyes; they were still blurry. She shook her head to clear it. The last thing she could remember was the ground erupting beneath her feet, and being thrown into the stone wall. She blinked several times to clear her vision for good. Her eyes were met to a horrifying scene: shinobi and Protoss darting all around as zerglings and roaches attacked them all indiscriminately. Even before she could get up a roach spat its vile acid all over one of her shinobi. The poor ninja writhed on the ground screaming as the acid ate through her armor.

Sakura got up quickly, and punched the offending roach, breaking through its shell with a loud 'crunch!'. She was rather pleased with this, but the roach's companions seemed less so. A hydralisk launched a volley of spines at her, and two roaches came at her, one on the left and right. She moved to the left to attack the roach, dodging the volley of spines at the same time. She looked up, only then realizing that was the wrong way to go.

There was a stone wall in her path; she had just hemmed herself into a corner. The hydralisk and roach closed in behind her. Her back literally against the wall, she had nowhere to go to dodge them. She moved to the side as much as she could, and another volley of serrated spines slammed into the wall where she had been merely a second ago. She felt a searing pain in her arm at the same time though. One of the spines had grazed her, leaving a decent sized cut in her forearm. She looked at the roach. The thing was about to spit another one of its globs of acid at her, and this time there was really nowhere to go.

Just then, just as it was about to kill her, something came down hard right on top of it. Sakura blinked in shock. A slender, golden metal spear had skewered the roach through the back and right into the ground. A quick flash of light and burst of heat, and the hydralisk was gone too; disintegrated into a pile of ash.

"Need some help?" a familiar voice said somewhere above her.

Sakura looked up… and up …. and up some more. The golden spear went higher and higher, until it connected to a giant metal waist. On top of that was a massive golden robot thing, with a sloped hull, and a small thing with antennae that looked like it was the robot's head. Sakura's mouth fell open; the thing was huge! It had to be at least a hundred feet tall. The gigantic robot dwarfed even the largest of Konoha's buildings. Standing upon one of the huge robot's leg joints, was Tenten.

"Man am I glad to see you," Sakura called up to her friend.

"Looks like I got here just in time," Tenten commented, "Well come on, get up. True shinobi don't lie down when there's a battle going on."

Another hydralisk burst out of the ground, its armblades extended.

"Don't worry I got this," Tenten yelled.

Tenten pulled a kunai from her belt, and threw it at the hydralisk. This kunai was different though. It was bigger, broader, and it had deadly serrated barbs instead of the normal straightedge. The blade buried itself all the way to the hilt into the alien's shoulder, sending it spinning from the impact. A second kunai hit it in the side of the face, sending it spinning again. The third buried itself in the back of the alien's neck, right at the base of its skull. Its spine severed, the hydralisk hit the ground-dead.

"Nice," Sakura admired, "Those aren't normal kunai. What did you do?"

"I made them stronger," Tenten explained, "Before they were good against light armor and the flesh of humans, but they had proved to be less effective against the armored carapaces of the Zerg. So, to deal with that issue, I reengineered the blade to be stronger, so it penetrates through thicker armor more easily and with a lot more power. Now the blades go through Zerg like they were paper."

"Nice," Sakura said again, "Well then, let's not waste any more time. We still have a battle to win!"

Tenten nodded, and directed her machine, as well as 4 others behind her, into the heart of the skirmish taking place.

Shikamaru heard a noise behind him. He checked behind himself to see a roach unburrowing behind him.

"Impaling shadows!"

Shikamaru turned around to see his handiwork. A huge shadow spike made by the shadow the roach's burrow had made had pierced through the roach's belly, and out the top of the armored shell.

"That's the problem with being so low to the ground," Shikamaru smirked, "No armor protecting the area closest to it."

He undid the jutsu, and the roach collapsed onto the ground.

He looked around; the Zerg were everywhere. Even with Thanatos's deadly skill and furious strength, as well as that of his brethren, they were outmatched. It was only a matter of time before they were completely overrun. He tried to assist, but there were Zerg trying to surround him on all sides. At this rate, things were going to turn out very ugly for him.

Across the village, Naruto was looking around seeing the exact same thing as his friends. He and his fire teams had just run head on into an ambush, and they were paying for it dearly. The Zerg had hemmed them in on all sides, and the roaches especially were thinning them out rapidly. Naruto hit a particularly large roach with a giant gust of wind, sending it through a window into a building. He followed the alien into the building, hitting it with a Rasengan. The roach went through another wall, but it just got back up and spat a deluge of acid. Naruto dodged it, and the acid disintegrated a wall …. and what was a nice looking couch.

Naruto noticed something then: the roach was right under a weak section of the house's upper floor. A good strike and the whole thing would cave in right on top of it. He threw a trio of explosive kunai at the already buckling support beam. With the support beams gone, the second story began to sag under the weight of who-knows-what. The roach looked up in surprise as the entire second story collapsed right onto it, crushing the roach instantly.

Naruto turned to leave, and saw that miraculously, his men had emerged victorious from the ambush. He was about to exit the house and rejoin them, when a telepathic message rang in their heads.

"This is royal zealot Thanatos. To anyone hearing this message, we are being overrun by the Zerg. Requesting immediate assistance."

Naruto was going to respond, but the mental link was cut off before he could. The house above him started to creak ominously. He started to run for the door, but the wall caved in right in front of him, blocking him off. He was forced to back up quickly, and the whole house collapsed with him still in it.

Naruto pushed a large piece of debris off of himself. He coughed, hauling himself out of the rubble of what was a house less than two minutes ago. He looked up; there was no way out that way, or the way he came. The only way out he could see was if he moved through the house, out the other side from where he started. In other words, he was cut off.

"Lord Hokage! Are you okay?" one of his shinobi called through the rubble.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Naruto assured them.

"Hang on, we'll move the rubble and get you out," the shinobi promised.

"Don't bother," Naruto told them, "Get over to the south and help Shikamaru. I'll find my own way out and meet you there."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Now get out of here; you're wasting time."

"Be careful."

Naruto heard them all turn and run down the road. He turned around, and started to head through the destroyed house. Gingerly, he picked his way over an overturned chair, and a smashed table. The hall forward was blocked though; he would have to find another way around. The hall to the right had caved in too. The only way to go on was to go up the stairs. It didn't help that the only light was coming in through the smallest of holes through the heaps of debris. As he made his way up the stairs, he felt that there was something up with the carpet; it felt as if something heavy but smooth had been dragged over it not too long ago.

Up the stairs, and down another hall. The poor person who had lived here had some serious cleanup to do when this was all over. A crunch underneath his foot made him jump. He looked down and realized that he was stepping on the glass frames of the pictures that used to hand on the walls of this hallway. He followed the oddly compressed carpet into a small bedroom. The floor had broken, leaving a hole to drop down to the 1st floor. He jumped down, and then hauled himself out of a broken window. He marveled at his luck that he didn't have to move anything, and that there was already a path for him to take to get out.

He started down the road, heading towards the sound of battle to the south. But he didn't get very far. The wall in front of him exploded outwards, and a hydralisk burst out of the wall hissing at him. This hydralisk was bigger than normal though; it was at least 3 or 4 feet taller than the others he'd seen so far. It hissed at him, at raised its gigantic armblades to cut him down. Naruto backed up, narrowly avoiding the slash.

"Wind style! Needle Wind!" Naruto immediately counter-attacked.

The wind around him spun and condensed into super thin, super sharp needles. They hissed towards the huge monster, piercing all the way through it. It fell back with a screech. Naruto followed up with another Rasengan, throwing it into a mass of broken glass and wood. He advanced slowly, wanting to make sure he killed the thing. Right as he did, a weird clicking noise sounded behind him. He whirled around to see a large green ball rolling at full speed right at him. With a yell he jumped out of the way, and the baneling smashed into the fallen hydralisk, completely covering it with its acid.

Naruto half expected to see the big hydralisk (he just remembered the Praetor called the bigger ones Hunter Killers) thrashing around as the acid ate it, but there was no such movement underneath it.

'It's got to be dead,' Naruto thought, 'There's no way it could have survived.'

The acid began to become neutralized, and was fading away. No. No it wasn't. The hunter killer's carapace was absorbing the baneling's acid. And worse, Naruto watched in horror as the monstrosity's wounds swiftly closed shut. The thing got back up, perfectly healed. Naruto ducked away, and hid from the massive creature. He reached out with his mind to find that of the Praetor Xelios's. It wasn't long before he found the mind he was looking for.

'Praetor! The banelings. They… their- .'

'Their acid has the property to accelerate the regeneration rate of damaged Zerg tissues by 4000%. We've noticed,' Xelios finished darkly, 'We discovered that just now. We were about to finish off one of those damn infestors and its body guards when a big group of the things came rolling towards us. We jumped to avoid them only to realize we weren't their target at all.'

Naruto would have continued the conversation, but he didn't have time. Giant armblades smashed through the wooden roof he was hiding under and ripped them apart. Naruto rolled out of cover to attack back, but the hunter killer whipped its massive tail at him, catching him right in the chest. He flew backwards. He looked up to see the alien bearing down on top of him, armblades raised. He threw a kunai at it, and backed up until he hit a stone wall. The thing aimed its armblade carefully, making sure it was going to kill the shinobi in one blow. The hunter killer swung its arm down right at Naruto's chest.

The blade stopped inches away from hitting him; something had caught the big hydralisk's arm in mid swing and was slowly dragging it back. The alien strained against whatever was holding it, but whatever it was was too strong, and its arm was dragged back behind its head. Hissing in rage, the alien raised its other arm to kill him instead. Before it could even begin the swing though, whatever had caught its first arm caught the second. Shrieking in frustrated rage, the alien opened its chest. Naruto knew that at point blank range there was no way he could dodge those grooved spines.

Just as it fired its volley of spines, the ground buckled underneath it, throwing its balance backwards. The spines flew right over Naruto's head and punched through the stone wall behind him. Naruto could see something covering the hunter killer's entire body, until only its head was poking out from the mound. The alien started to scream an unceasing scream of rage.

"Sand coffin!"

The hunter killer's scream abruptly stopped, and its head sagged downwards in death. A young man with red hair and jet black eyes stepped out in front of the dead alien. The young man had a red tattoo on his forehead and a huge gourd on his back.

"How many times must I save you Naruto?" the man asked him, holding out a hand to help him up.

"Hey, I've saved you plenty of times too you know. If anything this makes us even, Gaara," Naruto grasped his friend's arm.

"Rather ugly aren't these things," Gaara observed the dead hydralisk buried in sand.

"That they are, my friend. That they are," Naruto nodded.

Down south, Shikamaru was facing off against no less than a dozen infested shinobi. He couldn't find any way to take them all out, not without leaving himself open to at least one of them. Luckily for him, it didn't matter.

A blonde haired girl with a ridiculously large fan flew overhead, hitting more than half of the infested with a huge gust of wind. Shikamaru took advantage of the confusion to kill the others while the girl landed next to him.

"Typical Shikamaru; always needs to get his butt saved by a girl," the blonde girl smiled at him.

"Haha," Shikamaru laughed sarcastically, "Nice to see you too Temari. What took you guys so long? Wait, let me guess. Your hair came undone and you just couldn't bear the thought of showing up to a battle like that."

"More like Kankurō couldn't decide which of his precious puppets he wanted to bring," Temari smirked at him.

"Speaking of which, where is Kankurō anyways?"

"He, Baki, and Matsuri are leading a full frontal assault on the remaining aliens outside the walls. Gaara and I led our teams in to clean up the remainder inside your village," Temari explained.

Shikamaru and Temari ran side by side, rushing to aid in the cleansing of Konoha from the few Zerg that survived the Suna shinobi's onslaught. The Konoha shinobi stood on the walls with their Suna shinobi friends; victory was theirs at last.

Author's Note: Hey everybody, school just started for me again, so things might start to go a little slower, but I'm not stopping the story during school. So if the chapter takes a while, please be patient because I am working on it. Thank you for understanding.

Also, please tell me: What are your thoughts on the new additions? Please let me know whether or not you like my choice of upgrades, and the addition of the raptor zerglings. Thanks again!


	15. Chapter 13: Lock and Load

**Author's Note: Hey everybody, sorry for the wait. Anyways, here's the next chapter. Hope you like it!**

**Chapter 13: Lock and Load**

Naruto and his lieutenants, Gaara, the other Sand Siblings and their lieutenants, as well as the Protoss Executor and Praetor were all together to discuss their next move. There were so many of them now they couldn't all fit in Naruto's office, so they were forced to move the meeting to the Gantrithor's bridge. The Suna shinobi's jaws had all dropped upon seeing the massive ship. They all clustered around the holographic map in the center of the room. The map was zoomed out to almost orbital view, showing a mini Konoha, mini Gantrithor and mini Protoss base, and the whole landscape to the Zerg base. Unfortunately, the whole Zerg base was black, seeing as the Protoss had no intel on the hives thanks to their spore crawlers.

"How are we going to fight back against these ugly monsters?" Kankurō asked aloud, "Do we even know anything about them?"

"Well we should ask them," Gaara pointed at the Protoss, "seeing as they brought the beasts here in the first place."

"That was completely unintentional," Xelios looked over at him, "Bringing them here, or ourselves for that matter, was never in our plans."

"Here's one thing I don't get," Ino said, "If you guys have so much experience fighting these aliens, why aren't you capable of coming up with something that actually works?"

"You should consider yourselves lucky that we don't have the technology required to use our preferred means against the Zerg," Executor Selendis glared at the girl, "If we had the capabilities, we would have purified the infection by incinerating the entire area and you with it."

"How and why no longer matters, so there's no point in bickering about it," Naruto told them sternly, "All that matters now is that we work together and eradicate these things as soon as possible. Now, how do we do that?"

"We now have the strength to mount a full-scale assault upon the main hive cluster, but I am unwilling to risk lives unnecessarily due to lack of intelligence," Xelios stated.

"We might have to though considering our observers can't get inside far enough for us to actually see what is going on," Thanatos spoke up, "With the new colossi supporting us, we could try a frontal assault upon the main defenses while the colossi and phoenixes flanked."

"It would work, but the number of casualties we would sustain would be unacceptably high," Shikamaru contemplated the map in front of him, "We only have the strength for one real push against them, so it needs to do as much damage as possible if not wipe them out entirely."

"Without any information though we'd be walking in blind," Kakashi argued, "If they have any remaining tricks up their sleeve I'd like to know beforehand."

"Agreed," Xelios and Naruto nodded at him.

"Well the question still remains 'How do we get the intel we need?'" Gaara said.

"Wait, I think I have an idea," Sai suddenly spoke up, "Their spore crawlers can see and destroy your observers even when their cloaked right? So they can't get through. But my ink creatures can. The spore crawlers won't be able to attack them, and even if the Zerg did attack them, they're just ink; they can't be harmed. I'll draw a couple thousand of them and tell them to scout the entire base. When they return they'll converge into a 3-D model of the whole place that the Protoss can scan and recreate on this table."

"Brilliant!" Shikamaru smiled, "Get to work on that right away, and if you can, draw extras so they can show the creatures themselves too."

Sai nodded and left the room.

"Okay, now, what about our attack force itself?" Kakashi asked, "Even with perfect intel we need the firepower to use it to destroy the enemy."

"There will be no need to worry," Tenten leaned forward, "I've got that part well covered."

"How so?" Gaara asked.

Come with me to the robotics bays and forges, then I'll show you," Tenten told them.

* * *

Inside the forges…..

"Okay, will you show us your creations now?" Xelios asked Tenten.

Tenten nodded, smiling.

"The first thing the engineers and I tackled was our weaponry; so far through this fight we shinobi have been wielding weapons that are largely ineffective when used against the Zerg. So, I redesigned our kunai and other weaponry to be stronger and more suited for armor piercing, so they should now be more effective."

Tenten picked up a kunai and a spear for them to see the new designs. They were all thicker and heavier, and had serrated or barbed edges. All in all, the new weapon designs were very wicked looking.

"Good! Finally we can actually do something against these monsters!" Shikamaru admired.

"On the flipside, the Protoss have also improved their weaponry; their psionic blades are stronger, and now they burn as they cut. As in, they literally light the wound it creates on fire."

"Excellent," Thanatos would have smiled if he could.

"That' not all we did," Tenten grinned, "Wait until you see our new defensive equipment."

The girl pulled out a standard shinobi flak jacket. Only it wasn't the same. The jacket had a sheet of overlapping plates of what looked like Protoss metal.

"I've been studying our enemies, especially the flyers," she explained, "I noticed how as a mutalisk's attack bounces from target to target, it gets weaker and weaker. By incorporating Protoss material into our flak jackets, I've managed to redesign the piece to be more anti-projectile oriented. It's not strong enough to stop a direct hit from a hydralisk or a mutalisk, but it is strong enough to stop the mutalisk ricochet no matter whether it's the first bounce or the third."

"So, if a mutalisk hits the guy next to me, it'll hurt him, but the armor will protect me?" Sasuke asked.

"Unfortunately yes."

"What do you mean 'unfortunately'?"

"Anyways," Tenten continued, "Clearly the jacket does not protect the limbs, so it's not like we'll be completely invulnerable to mutalisks, but we'll at least have something to help keep them from ripping us apart."

"Not bad, not bad," Shikamaru nodded approvingly, "Nothing's foolproof, and any edge we can get we need to take."

Tenten smiled at him.

"What about defenses for the village itself?" Sakura asked, "We can't just leave it defenseless when we launch our attack."

"We've been working on that," Thanatos told them, "The Praetor and I added extensions to your walls so we could add photon cannons for extra defense. The cannons are placed in such a way that enemies will be caught in overlapping fields of fire, and the height advantage should keep them from falling too quickly."

"The Protoss have also given us a plasma shield generator to replace the main gate," Tenten told them, "The new shield can power up and down in a rapid enough manner that it can act as a gate, as well as allow us to see what the enemy is doing without exposing ourselves."

"The shield is generated by one of our own prismatic cores," Xelios explained, "The prismatic core is a self-sustaining energy source, so unless the core is destroyed, the gate can withstand extreme damage from hostiles and still remain functional and replenish itself. The replenishing speed of the shield is also much faster than most of our own, especially when not under attack, so bringing the shield down will prove very difficult for the Zerg."

"What about the roaches? They tunneled under the wall last time. Even if the photon cannons can detect them when they're burrowed, they might not be able to reach them when they're so far underground," Hinata brought up.

"Addressed that issue too," Tenten smiled and held up an odd looking box, "Seeing how the Protoss store their energy within crystals, I started to experiment with storing chakra in external devices and how it could help with our combat techniques. In the end I came up with this; it stores chakra internally then uses it to create jutsus when enemies get within a 60 meter radius."

"What jutsu will the things use?" Sasuke looked at the box, interested.

"The box leaks the chakra stored out into the ground, turning it into large spikes of rock. The spikes of rock then propel themselves at the intruder, impaling them from all sides. After the target is impaled, the chakra inside the rock spears expands outwards at the speed of sound, causing the rocks to explode, sending splinters of rock through the target from the inside out."

"Okay, that's definitely on the list of most painful ways to die," Ino commented.

"Are you sure that isn't a little overkill?" Sakura asked.

"Actually, it's perfect, considering roaches regenerate and heal much faster underground. The fact that the device is a one-shot-kill is definitely a good thing," Xelios told them.

"Not to mention those disgusting infestors," Sasuke added, "If you ask me those things deserve a painful death more than any of them."

"For once I actually agree with you," Shikamaru looked over at them.

"Alright, with these new upgrades, we should definitely be able to even the odds a bit," Naruto looked at the array of new weapons and armor again.

"What, you think that's all I've done in the past few days?" Tenten looked over at him, "I am offended that you think so little of my innovative abilities."

"You mean you've done even more than this?" Temari asked her incredulously.

"Oh this is nothing compared to the other things we've been working on," Tenten smiled at her, "Wait until you see what we've been working on in the robotics bays."

Temari nodded, impressed. Gaara looked over at his older sister; why was she so close to Shikamaru? Those two were standing way too close together for his liking. He was going to have to keep an eye on those two the entire time they were here. He watched the two of them as they walked down to the robotics bays….. they never left each other's side. Never more than a foot or 2 apart from each other the whole time.

The young Kazekage would have continued to think on it, try to confirm his suspicions, but their arrival at their destination distracted him before he could. The robotics bays were large structures with what looked like 3 large cranes attached to the top. Gaara assumed those were used to lift and support tall and heavy items during construction or something.

"Okay, here we are," Tenten called back to them, "You guys ready for this?"

"Wait, what are we ready for?" Naruto asked.

"Well, which would you prefer to see first? Land or air?"

The group of Protoss and shinobi looked at each other.

"I'd think ground units first," Selendis decided.

The others nodded in agreement.

Tenten smiled and nodded. She motioned to one of the engineers. They nodded, and went into the bay to retrieve something. Everyone was wondering what could this new thing be? It had to be some sort of machine, but what? It wasn't long before they heard heavy footfalls of metal on metal. Out of the bay doors came what looked like a giant golden bug, like a caterpillar or some other sort of similar bug. Maybe a snail with a flatter shell, or a big metal slug, either one worked. Supporting it were 6 thick metal legs clearly designed for holding up heavy weights.

"Is… is that a reaver?" Xelios asked incredulously, "What did you do to it?!"

"You attached the legs for an immortal onto a decommissioned reaver?" Selendis looked at Tenten with a questioning expression.

"Well, why did you guys decommission the reaver in the first place?" Tenten asked her back.

"The reaver was a powerful weapon, but it was slow and cumbersome, and not altogether very versatile. Its lack of speed and mobility is why it was replaced by the new colossus."

"Exactly. When the engineers and I started our experiments we took a look at the thing, but we nearly tossed aside right away. The thing moves so slowly Naruto would be able to beat Shikamaru at shōgi before it finished crossing the room. So, we wanted to add speed to it, but wheels weren't versatile enough to deal with terrain elevation above a certain degree. We also thought about using a smaller version of the colossus' legs, but they were too thin to hold such a heavyset object; how you do it with the colossus is beyond me. So, we settled on the legs of an immortal; strong, sturdy, but still able to move at a decent pace."

"So, it's faster, but did you change anything else?" Xelios asked.

"Yes. As we reviewed the weaponry we have, it became pretty clear our anti-air is lacking. With the destruction of your stalkers, as far as I know of the only real air defenses you have are your sentries. Those sentries I know are not strong enough to deal with the sheer amount of mutalisks clogging up the skies. So then we looked at your old scout fighters; they had strong anti-air, but not good at taking on ground units, and they were too expensive. However, their anti-matter missiles were very powerful, so that gave me an idea. So, we converted the internal manufacturing plant inside the reaver that made the scarab bombs into an anti-matter missile factory."

The sides of the reaver opened up, and a large missile battery extended from the openings.

"Each missile battery contains ports for 16 anti-matter missiles," Tenten walked around the war machine pointing out key features, "So, each volley from the new reaver will unleash 32 anti-matter missiles upon whatever it's targeting. The batteries are placed upon swivels, so they have a 360 degree firing radius. Coupled with a separate targeting system for each battery, the new reaver is also capable of firing upon several targets in the same volley. Between volleys the batteries will retract back within the protective shell of the reaver while being reloaded, to protect the weaker joint sections from counter attacks."

"But that means the new reaver is completely defenseless against any ground forces the Zerg might throw at it," Thanatos pointed out.

"Correct. With the scarab factory gone, the new reaver has absolutely no way of defending itself against ground enemies. The reaver still has heavy armor plating, so it can withstand a decent amount of punishment, but because of the amount of room the missile factory and batteries take up the armor buckles faster than the original. Therefore, they require an escort to protect them during an attack, but our ground forces are more than adequate to handle that. What's more important is keeping our heavy weaponry, i.e. the colossi, from being destroyed by the mutalisks."

"I'm appalled that you gutted the reaver and demolished everything it ever stood for, but I cannot deny that your solution to the mutalisks is a good one," Xelios nodded approvingly at the young shinobi.

Tenten smiled her thanks at the scarred alien. She stood back, allowing the assembled shinobi and aliens a closer look at the new weapon.

Thanatos marveled at the new robot; he remembered how they had used reavers as support for him and his fellow zealots during the Battle of Braxis. Seeing them like this, they actually looked better now in his opinion. The added height made them a little more intimidating than the big hulking snail the original was.

"Okay, if you're done being awed by our amazing engineering skills, I have two more things to show you," Tenten told them.

She led them to an elevated platform area; whatever was on it was covered by a tarp. The group of aliens and shinobi looked curiously at the two shapes underneath the tarps. The two shapes were relatively flat, and had what looked like roughly the same shape.

"Continuing on with our theme of anti-mutalisk, the engineers and I decided to design one more piece of hardware geared towards the eradication of the winged worms."

Tenten pulled the cover off of the first object, revealing a phoenix. This phoenix however, had an odd extension behind the pilot's seat. The extension had a seat of its own, and clearly it was meant to be powered by something.

"So, mind telling us what that weird thing is on the back of that thing?" Sasuke pointed at the odd thing.

"In a moment, sheesh. Be patient for once," Tenten shushed him, "I'm getting there. So, when I first saw the phoenix, I wasn't sure I could really do anything with it; it was so geared towards one specific thing, and it did such a good job of it I was hesitant to mess around with it. However, the recent battles did reveal some flaws I thought I could fix. When I saw how they fought, I saw that they're very maneuverable and fast, but they need to be facing their target in order to be effective. With the number of mutalisks though, the phoenixes were getting surrounded, so they weren't able to out-maneuver due to sheer numbers.

To counter this we added anion pulse-crystals, which significantly increased the range of the phoenix's weapon. But that didn't fix the problem that they can only shoot what's in front of them. So, we added this extension to the back of the phoenix.

What the object does is store and control chakra. When active, it magnifies the power of the chakra, and sends it through the funnel here. So to use it, a shinobi activates it and then launches a jutsu through the funnel. The spinning and magnification of the chakra magnifies the power of whatever jutsu is launched through it, making it at least three times stronger than normal. We discovered that it's most effective with a combination of wind chakra stored in the weapon and a fire style jutsu."

"So, it's a really powerful weapon mounted to the back of the phoenix as a means of defense against enemies around it," Gaara summarized.

"That's exactly what it is," Tenten nodded, "But, there was a problem we just couldn't fix; the weapon, which we named the amplifier, needs to be aimed, which means we had to sacrifice protection of the operator. The shinobi operating the amplifier has almost no protection besides how well that pilot flying their craft can dodge. Also, that means the operator is also exposed to the elements the whole time the craft is in flight. So, in order to protect the weapon operator, the phoenix cannot fly about a certain height, making them a little less maneuverable during combat."

"There's no way around that?" Naruto asked.

"Not without compromising the amplifier's ability to aim, no."

"So, if they're less maneuverable, what exactly is their purpose?" Shikamaru asked.

"These phoenixes are meant to be heavy air superiority; punch through the enemy dealing maximum damage, allowing the other phoenixes to clean up the survivors."

"How long can the amplifier be used?" Thanatos asked, "It would not be prudent to rely on a weapon that could cease working in the middle of battle."

"The amplifier relies on chakra to continue working, and it uses some of it every time it's used, so that is a valid concern. However, the amplifier's chakra storage unit is large enough to sustain power for the length of a large-scale battle. Should the amplifier's chakra supply run dry and lose power, the operator can add their own chakra to bring it back up. So, as long as the operator uses the weapon strategically, that shouldn't be a problem."

The group nodded. Shikamaru was already placing these new phoenixes into the plan formulating in his head. If only they had thought of this amplifier before the 4th Great Ninja War- it would have been quite the game changer during that conflict.

"Alright, I have one final model to show you guys," Tenten told them a few minutes later.

She unveiled the last covered object, which turned out to be another phoenix. The difference with this one was an odd protrusion hanging from the belly of the craft.

"Um, what is that hanging from the underbelly?" Thanatos asked.

"Well, first let me explain the reasoning," Tenten started, "During the latest fight, I noticed how vulnerable the phoenix is to anything on the ground. A phoenix can only "pick up" one enemy at a time, and they can't even shoot the thing they've picked up. You need two or more just to handle a single land-based opponent. Considering how few phoenixes we have, that's just not practical at all; in fact that's rather useless.

To combat this, I gave these phoenixes the ability to attack land opponents to a degree. Using some metal scraps, we created a small storage bay on the underside that can hold weapons which can be dropped on targets."

Tenten brought forward a medium sized object covered in paper bombs.

"This is a conical metal shell covered in paper bombs," she explained, "The phoenix 'bomber' can activate and drop these on command upon targets as they fly overhead. The bombs are aerodynamically designed to promote greater accuracy, so 'bombing runs' are hopefully going to be an effective support tactic. The bombs and storage are very light, so the phoenix bomber loses very little speed, and no maneuverability.

The only bad thing that we found is that during the bomber's run, it needs to slow down to make sure it doesn't overshoot the target. While it's moving at a slower pace, the bomber is vulnerable to enemy fire. With practice though, I think whoever's piloting can overcome that, and make the run at top speed."

Tenten showed them all how the upgrades worked, explaining all the concepts to them as best she could.

"Alright, that's what I've got for you," Tenten finally finished, "Using them is up to you guys now."

She was happy to finally be done talking; explaining every single thing had been rather exhausting. Not to mention nerve-racking, having everyone staring at her while she talked. All those eyes on her made her a little self-conscious about the weapons she had created, what if they hadn't been good enough? She wandered over to the towering colossus she now used as transport, leaning against one of its incredibly tall legs. She let out a steadying breath she didn't even know she had been holding.

"Hey, everything okay?"

Tenten turned to see Hinata watching her. She smiled at her friend's concern.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little bit unsettled from speaking in front of so many people, even if they are all friends. I don't know how other people do it, it's a little scary."

"You don't have to worry about that one bit," Hinata reassured her, "You were fantastic. Even though we knew next to nothing, you made it all perfectly understandable."

"Good," Tenten smiled in appreciation.

Hinata looked up at the massive robot Tenten was leaning against. The thing was so tall even the Jῡbi would have had to look up to see its head. How did those thin legs hold up such a massive construct?

"Tenten, is it just me, or do you seem attached to this giant machine?" Hinata asked, "Isn't this the same one you rode on during that last battle?"

"Yes it is," Tenten looked up at the colossus above her, "This particular colossus is special you see; it's programed to respond to my commands only, so the only one capable of controlling this one is me."

Hinata didn't know how to respond to that statement; what was there to say when your friend tells you she has a pet machine that's almost 200 meters tall?

"Just make sure not to step on me, okay?"

* * *

Outside, Xelios stood watching the goings on in his base with his arms folded. Kakashi joined him. Xelios looked at the masked shinobi; the white-haired ninja simply stood there with his hands in his pockets.

"Your student's getting into another fight with mine," was all he said.

"Again?" Xelios shook his head tiredly, "That's the 4th time in the last 2 days. I told Thanatos to be more respectful; I expected he'd listen. What are they arguing about now?"

"No idea. After the dozen fights about Naruto's leadership abilities I stopped paying attention to what they were yelling at each other. I prefer a nice book over an argument between fools."

Xelios laughed mentally. He didn't even need to see Kakashi's face to know he was laughing too.

"Those two will be the death of us won't they?" Xelios commented.

"Oh I'm almost sure of it. In fact, I'm surprised my students haven't already killed me."

"That bad?"

"You have no idea. Constant fighting, constant rivalry. Betrayal. The three of them were great together, and yet at the same time they were horrible. Even deadly at times. Being their sensei was truly a blessing and a curse."

Xelios laughed again.

"Still, they're our students I suppose. We have a duty to protect them don't we?"

The two of them nodded at that statement. Besides, they both knew that having their student's best interests at heart was one of the most important parts of being a teacher.

* * *

Shikamaru lay on his back on a hill, looking at the girl to his right. Temari stood up.

"I should probably go; Gaara is bound to get suspicious soon. He's pretty perceptive after all."

"Yeah, we're friends and all, but I'd still rather not get into a disagreement with him. It'd be a total drag getting into a fight with the Kazekage."

Temari smiled and left, walking back down the hill. Less than a minute later Naruto stomped past, not even noticing Shikamaru laying there. He punched a tree out of anger, and ended up with a bruised hand. If anything that just made him even madder.

"Problem there Naruto?" Shikamaru called over to him.

Naruto's head snapped up in surprise.

"Nothing really, just frustrated that's all."

Shikamaru kipped up and walked over, "Why? What's up?"

Naruto frowned, "I should have used the Kyuubi at the start of the last battle. I didn't want to in case things got out of control, but I should have just gone in with Kurama and destroyed them. It would have saved so many lives."

"Nah, it wouldn't have been a good idea anyways," Shikamaru shook his head, "Kurama's powerful, but I don't think it would have ended well for you. There were thousands of them; sure you'd kill hundreds with every blow, but you'd be such a big target. The whole time you'd be bombarded by acid eating Kurama, and being hit by hundreds of spines strong enough to go right through 3 inches of metal like it was paper. In the end, I'm pretty sure sheer numbers would have killed the pair of you. And even if you did win, they would know about the Kyuubi, and they'd start preparing heavier things to kill it. We'd lose our only real trump card way too soon; we need to wait to use Kurama until the opportune moment."

Naruto sighed, "I suppose you're right."

Naruto and Shikamaru stood there in silence for a few minutes, just watching the village. The sun was just beginning to set when an ANBU shinobi appeared right in front of them. The shinobi bowed to the pair of them before speaking.

"Captain Sai has returned. The other commanders are gathering on the Gantrithor bridge," they reported.

The pair of them nodded, and headed back up the hill.

* * *

"So, what does this mystery hive look like?" Ino asked.

Xelios pushed a button, magnifying the map to show only the Zerg hive cluster. There were huge organic buildings surrounding a massive central one, which was clearly the hive. Spread all around the hive were 15 conical buildings that had similar structure to the hive, only smaller.

"By the gods….." one of the Protoss whispered.

"No wonder the Zerg can mass armies so quickly," Xelios stared at the map, "15 hatcheries and a hive?"

"We need to destroy those hatcheries as quickly as possible," Sakura suggested, "I think those should be priority one."

"No," Shikamaru shook his head, "There are more important targets we need to deal with first. See those buildings over there?"

Shikamaru pointed at a cluster of semi-circle buildings with spikes growing from the edge.

"Those are hydralisk dens. They hold the genetic sequences needed to create the hydralisk strain. If we can penetrate deep enough into their hive cluster and destroy them, they won't be able to make the hydralisk as strong as usual. Destroying the dens would cripple their hydralisk strain almost to the point of uselessness until they create replacements."

"Wait, what's that strange building nearby though?" Temari pointed out a different looking building that looked like it might have once been a hydralisk den.

"No idea, you guys know?"

The Protoss all shook their heads.

"I have never seen its like," Xelios looked at the building hard, "We should destroy it quickly, before some unknown strain begins to attack us."

"Agreed. Now, I have a plan that will deal a crushing blow to the Zerg," Shikamaru leaned in to show them the details.

**Author's Note #2: So there it is guys! Hope you enjoyed. Please review if you have the time; I'm always looking to improve. Plus I'm really eager to know what you guys think so far. Thank you, and I'll see you all next chapter. **


	16. Chapter 14: Counter-Offensive

**Hi all; sorry about the long wait. Anyways, here's the next chapter. Hope you enjoy it!**

**Chapter 14: Counter-Offensive**

"This is insane," Thanatos looked at Naruto in order to speak directly to him, "We're marching en masse towards a Zerg hive, and we're not prepared for an attack at all. I still believe leaving the new weapons back at the base was a bad idea. And establishing a forward-operations base during the assault? We have limited enough resources as it is without spending large amounts of it constructing an entire new base!"

"Don't worry, Shikamaru knows what he's doing. If he doesn't want us to bring our new weapons, he's got a good reason for it. As for the base, you heard what he said, and both the Praetor and the Executor agreed with him. If we want to start putting pressure on the Zerg, we need a safe location closer to their hive."

"I understand that, but why in the middle of battle? Why split up our already limited forces just before a major battle?"

"I don't know. All we can do is trust Shikamaru's judgment."

"I do not like this blind trust. I fear it will get us all killed."

* * *

Executor Selendis paced up and down the bridge of the Gantrithor impatiently.

"Status report," she ordered.

"The Gantrithor has been fully repaired; bringing all systems online now. Once power has been restored to all systems the ship will once again be fully operational."

"How long until all systems are fully powered?"

"Estimated 30 minutes and counting."

* * *

"We're on the creep," Xelios reported, "We should be seeing Zerg any minute now."

"Everyone stay alert! Remember; the Zerg move faster when on the creep than they do on normal ground," Thanatos reminded them all.

Naruto looked around at the shinobi behind him; they were all repulsed by this purple 'living ground'. In all fairness, he didn't like it either. The way it stuck to his shoes was just … creepy. And the fact that it felt like he was treading on a living being creeped him out even further. He would have contemplated on it a little more, but he didn't get the chance. A line of spikes burst out of the ground right towards him, and they would have impaled him if Thanatos hadn't pulled him out of the way.

"Lurkers!" Thanatos held out a hand to halt everyone.

"Where are they?" Sasuke looked around, "I don't see them anywhere."

"The Lurker attacks from underground," Xelios told him, "The beasts are defenseless if they're on the surface."

"Then how do we kill them?" Sakura looked over at the 2 Protoss.

"Watch, and we'll show you."

The 2 of them edged forward carefully. They waited until the spikes burst out of the ground and darted towards them. Thanatos dodged the spikes to the left, and Xelios the right. The two of them started running forwards, eyes trained on the ground. Another line of spikes emerged from the ground towards Thanatos, who easily dodged them yet again. He pointed to the ground where the spikes originated from. With a long jump he flew over the area and plunged his psionic blade deep into the ground. Somewhere below ground a feral scream of surprise echoed. The ground shook beneath the young Protoss, and a large Zerg beast burst from it.

This Zerg was similar to the roach, only larger and not as heavily armored. The legs were more slender, sort of like those of a colossus, and its head was in the same shape of a hydralisk's. The thing screamed in rage as it tried to shake the young Protoss off, but the Protoss was anchored by the blade he had stabbed through the armor on its back. As it struggled, Xelios darted forward, spiking the Lurker through the side of the head with his twin psionic claws. Thanatos jumped from the Zerg as its legs gave way and hit the ground.

* * *

"Broodmother, the Protoss and the humans are heading for the hive cluster! They have already broken through our perimeter defenses!"

"Ready our forces, but do not engage. Let them come to us!"

"As you wish."

The Broodmother looked out towards the enemy, even though she could not see them. So, they wished to challenge the Swarm's power directly did they? They will regret such a foolish action!

* * *

Thanatos and Sasuke stood side by side, cutting through a group of zerglings.

"Why aren't they attacking?" Thanatos wondered.

"Pretty sure they are," Sasuke responded as he ran a zergling through with his sword.

"They don't attack like this. This is like they're not even trying. It's almost insulting how laughably pathetic their attempts to repel us are."

"Well I doubt it's going to stay like that for long," Shikamaru was behind them, "We're almost at the hill. Once we're over it, we're going to have a lot of hostiles all around us."

"Then let's not keep them waiting!" Sasuke urged them.

"Hold on," Gaara held him back, "There are over a dozen of those spine crawlers waiting for us at the top of that hill. If we charge in now they'll tear us to shreds. Let me handle them first."

Gaara started funneling his sand into the ground. The ground beneath the spine crawlers was broken down into more sand, but the creep made raising it difficult. It took Gaara much longer and more effort than normal to lift the sand around the spine crawlers. The things jabbed at the sand, trying to stab through the stuff encasing them in large cocoons, but they're efforts had no effect. Every spine crawler was completely wrapped in Gaara's sand.

"Sand Burial!"

The sand crushed the spine crawlers with a sickening 'crunch!'. Blood began to ooze out from the sand in little streams.

"Okay, now we can keep going."

Naruto looked sideways at his friend. "Show off."

Gaara looked back at him with a small smile, "Right, because you didn't get enough opportunities to be one last war."

The top of the hill was already covered in blood by the time they reached it. It was a little disgusting, and yet satisfying to see at the same time. The Zerg hive was a weird looking place; full of fleshy, living buildings everywhere. Like the whole place was just one big living thing. On the left were tall flesh towers with mushroom tops, and on the right, the hydralisk dens Shikamaru had pointed out earlier. Towering over them all in the back was the main hive, flanked by 2 hatcheries. Pools of green liquid were clustered around the bases of these three structures. The rest of the place didn't seem to have much organized structure, but certain areas contained certain buildings the rest didn't.

A cacophony of screaming cries echoes from somewhere above the hive, signaling the arrival of the Zerg's flocks of mutalisks. Hundreds of the flying horrors filled the sky. Sasuke looked up at the things. Really, the things weren't altogether that scary. More than half of their size was their wings. What was scary was the fact that there were just so many of them.

On the ground, Zerg began streaming through the gaps between buildings towards them.

"They're approaching fast," Xelios warned, "We should begin phase 2."

"Agreed," Shikamaru nodded and spoke into a radio, "All phoenix squadrons, engage."

Everyone looked up as phoenixes suddenly were attacking the mutalisk flocks from 2 sides. The mutalisks tried to fly away to outmaneuver their opponents, but by flying to one side they simply ran into the phoenixes on the other. When they tried to fly towards them to attack back, the phoenixes simply reversed, their upgraded range shredding through one mutalisk after another without mercy. As they watched, fireballs and other jutsus were launched from the backs of several of the phoenixes. Shikamaru watched the action above them while keeping an eye on the approaching ground forces. He waited for a little longer before speaking into the radio again.

"Phoenix bombers, begin bombing run."

The new phoenix bombers dropped from their positions in the clouds, heading straight for the approaching Zerg. The bombers strafed the Zerg, their bombs exploding right in the middle of them all. Alien body parts went sailing into the air all over.

"Alright, advance forwards!" Shikamaru waved everyone on, "Head for the hydralisk dens. Demolition teams 1-4, prepare explosives. Advance teams, punch a way through to the hive; demolition teams 5 and 6 follow them in. Fighters, search and destroy all remaining airborne hostiles. Bombers, switch targets; bring down those spires."

Gaara held up his hand, signaling everyone to follow him. The army charged after him. Seeing their target, all the Zerg immediately changed their trajectory to intercept them. Masses of Zerg were literally scrambling over each other to get to them.

"Perfect," Shikamaru smiled.

"How is that perfect in any way, shape, or form?" Ino looked at him like he was insane, "We're about to get ripped to shreds by hordes of bloodthirsty aliens. HOW THE HELL IS ANY OF THAT GOOD?!"

"Perhaps he has a death wish?" Sai looked over at him.

"You two are a real drag, you know that right?"

"What else are friends for?"

"Just stop talking and start working. I need you two to go and destroy the odd looking den. It's probably the lurker den, so destroy it as fast as possible. You know what to do," Shikamaru pointed at the den on the far end.

Ino and Sai nodded, "Don't worry, we'll get it done."

The pair of them headed off.

"Okay, the rest of us need to hold this position; buy the demolition teams time to do their work."

The shinobi and Protoss nodded, going to their prearranged positions. The waves of zerglings reached them first, leaping up on top of the defenders. Time seemed to slow down, as it always did in battle, everything moved in slow motion. Next the roaches reached them, spitting their acid saliva at any target they could reach.

"Having a serious case of déjà vu right now," Iruka muttered.

"You're not the only one," Hinata punched a roach hard enough using her lion fist technique to cave in the creature's armored carapace.

* * *

Temari and Matsuri led their team cautiously into one of the Zerg hatcheries. The fleshy building pulsed all around them as they advanced deeper and deeper.

"Matsuri, get the charges ready," Temari ordered softly, "I'd rather not stay here very long if we can help it."

Matsuri nodded. According to Sai's ink creature map, they were nearing the hatchery's central chamber. Once there, the charges needed to be placed in a ring around the edge to destroy the structure's central supports. Once done, they needed to be well away before detonation.

The tunnel ended very abruptly, and the team found themselves at their intended destination. The chamber was large, rising in a conical shape. On the ground were hundreds of pulsating, luminescent green eggs. In the middle of them all was a Zerg creature unlike any other they had seen so far. It had a long lower body, like a spider's, with 6 legs supporting it. The upper body was similar to that of a human, though the head and arms were as far from human as they could get. Two large wing-like claws extended from the back. The scariest part of this Zerg was not its shape though, but the spark of cunning intelligence in its eyes. Upon noticing the shinobi's entrance, the thing screeched, spitting acid spines at them. It started to advance towards them, still screeching. Temari opened her giant fan.

"Matsuri, hurry up and plant the explosives; I'll deal with this thing."

Temari ran through the clusters of eggs, blocking volleys of acid spines with her fan.

* * *

Outside, the rest of the army was in full battle with the Zerg swarms. Gaara and several others had raised barricades, entrenching their position. Shinobi and Protoss fighters alternated between ducking behind cover and attacking. Phoenixes continued to circle above the entrenched fighters, keeping the skies clear.

Sasuke ducked as a large wave of hydralisk spines flew overhead. A raptor jumped over the barricade, right above him. He stabbed the alien as it passed over, sending it crashing to the ground behind him. A claw burst through the sand very close to his head. Sasuke stumbled backwards as a hydralisk clawed its way through the sand barricade towards him. The sand sprang to life, sand arms wound themselves around the alien, dragging it back into the sand's body. There was a muffled cry as the sand constricted where the alien was. Gaara held out a hand to help Sasuke up.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, thanks," Sasuke nodded, "That was a little close for comfort."

A phoenix bomber raced above them, dropping a bomb right on the top of one of the Zerg spires in the distance. A section of the top was blasted apart, rocking the rest of the building. A bomb from a second bomber hit it square in the center support. The spire buckled and collapsed in a bleeding heap.

"Good to see Tenten's inventions work," Sasuke commented.

"Of course they work. I invented them didn't I?" Tenten was only a few paces away.

They all ducked as another wave of spines flew over their heads.

"When did you get here?"

"Just now. The Zerg are starting to break through the barricades, so it's almost time to start phase 3."

* * *

Ino and Sai edged into the den. Outside there was a battle raging, but it was strangely silent inside the building. Not a sound to be heard, not even the shinobi's footsteps. The den's floor declined, descending underground.

"We're here," Sai whispered.

Ino nodded, peering into the den. The place was a fairly deep pit with rocky outcroppings embedded in the walls. Three of the Zerg's giant lurkers stirred within. The broken remnants of their eggs were nearby; clearly these three had only hatched recently. Sai's silent hand signal was perfectly clear: "Clear them out."

As the pair of them moved further in, the lurkers spotted them. They began to burrow in preparation to attack. Amazing. Only a few minutes old and already they were ready to kill. Ino moved forwards, catching one of the lurkers with her mind-body transfer before it finished burrowing. Bending its will to serve hers, she forced the alien to send its subterranean spines towards one of the other lurkers, impaling it in a giant line down its body. Timed perfectly, she left the lurker just before its sibling impaled it, killing the host she had just been in. Sai made a giant ink creature, which began to dig frantically after the surviving one. The sole surviving lurker attacked the ink creature in equal desperation, trying to destroy the thing that was rapidly uncovering it. It succeeded….. after the creature had uncovered enough of it for Sai to attach no less than 5 paper bombs to its back.

Ino gave Sai a high five in congratulations.

"Okay, now that that's done with, let's get this job started shall we?"

Ino nodded. It would be very satisfying blowing up this disgusting place.

* * *

Temari breathed hard in frustration. The Zerg creature's acid spines damaged her fan when they hit it, and she couldn't afford that at the moment. She needed to deal with this …. what did those other aliens call them? Right, they're called queens. She needed to deal with this queen fast. She rolled out from cover throwing weapons at it, but it didn't fire back. Why was that?

She looked around; there wasn't anything special really. She tried the maneuver again, but this time received a counter attack. What was different this time? She looked around to find the answer. Then it hit her: the eggs. The eggs were the key. The queen was charged with caring for the eggs, so she was unwilling to attack if that meant endangering these pulsing green eggs. That was it.

She rolled again before jumping into the air. She needed to find the right spot. Blocking acid spines as she flew….. there. A cluster of eggs in close proximity to others. Perfect! She landed amidst the eggs and began attacking one as wildly and viciously as she could. The queen went ballistic, charging the girl screaming. Temari ducked behind the eggs, continuing to try to break it. The queen still wouldn't attack with her acid spines; she wouldn't risk hurting her precious eggs.

Temari kept attacking the eggs; she needed to wait just a little longer. The queen towered over her suddenly, her claws slashing and stabbing at the girl. She backed up, keeping out of range of the wildly swinging claws.

'Just a bit further, just a bit further,' she kept thinking.

She felt a blow to her shoulder, knocking her to the ground; the queen's claws had found their mark while she had been preoccupied. No matter though. It was too late for her anyways. Temari flipped away, landing as far away as she could. The queen noticed too late the paper bombs Temari had planted on the clusters of eggs when she had attacked them. The paper bombs exploded on the egg clusters on either side of the queen, sending her and her precious little eggs back to hell where they belonged.

Matsuri looked over as Temari walked back over to them.

"My my, that's quite the mess you've made there," she commented Temari's handiwork.

Temari grinned back at her.

* * *

Outside things were growing more chaotic by the minute. The Zerg hadn't broken through the shinobi and Protoss's defenses yet, but they were getting close. It wouldn't be much longer at this rate. Sasuke even had to use his Mangekyō Sharingan to eliminate several groups of Zerg before they overran those around him.

"Man, how many of these things are there?" he asked aloud, "No wonder they're all pissed off; they're all the typical middle child of 8 million!"

Iruka stabbed a hydralisk through the back of its head, looking at his former student incredulously.

"Sasuke, did you just make a joke?"

"Wait Sasuke's joking?!" Tenten looked over at him, "My God it really is the end of the world!"

"Oh shut up," Sasuke glared at them.

Across the battlefield, Naruto, Sakura, and Shikamaru were all on the frontline. It became almost a routine; attack Zerg that get through the barricade, duck to avoid the volleys of spines and acid. Pause for breath during the nonexistent breaks in the fighting.

Sakura punched a hydralisk into the ground when she saw the earth moving beneath her. Something, or multiple things, was burrowing underneath them, heading straight for a small cluster of shinobi and Protoss defending a small vantage point on the front. She tried to call out to them, to warn them, but she hadn't noticed in time. Before she had a chance, one of those big beetle-like infestors popped out of the ground, spewing their green goo, their fungal growth, all over the group. At the same time masses of pulsing green eggs made a large circle around them. The entire group went down in a hail of infested kunai and claws. Sakura couldn't watch.

Naruto saw it all as well. He was helpless to stop their deaths, but at least he could avenge them. Using the wind thief jutsu, the entire group of infested died, all falling simultaneously. The minute they touched the ground though another group of eggs burst from the ground, hatching more infested. Naruto took a step backwards. He needed to free the poor souls of his comrades fast; they'd suffered enough at the hands of the Zerg already.

"Wind style! Wind Needle Bomb!"

Naruto created a ball of super-dense air in his palm, similar to the shape of his Rasengan, before lightly tossing it into the group infested shinobi. The ball flew into the middle of them all, stopping at their average head level. With a loud bang the ball exploded, sending wind needles in all directions. Not a single infested survived the jutsu's effects; the wind needles pierced all the way through their skulls in every case.

He moved forward to see out past the barricades, but was repulsed by the sight before him. Swarms of infested shinobi were slowly lumbering towards them. Some of their faces were familiar; many of these infested were comrades of theirs that had fallen in earlier battles. Regardless of sentiment, it was also obvious that there were too many of them for him and his comrades to hold off at this point. They needed help, and they needed it now.

"Shikamaru, we need to pull out our final card," Naruto looked over at his friend.

Shikamaru nodded.

'Tenten, begin stage three,' Shikamaru told Tenten via a psychic link provided by the Protoss.

Tenten motioned everybody around her to get back.

"I'm going to need some room," she warned.

Tenten concentrated hard on her task. It was gonna take a lot of chakra to get this done properly.

"Summoning Jutsu!"

A giant cloud of smoke rose all around the girl. It cleared away to reveal a truly welcoming sight: towering over Tenten stood no less than 9 colossi, and surrounding them were the new reavers. She stood up, and jumped onto the largest of the colossi, which towered over even the others of its kind. Placing her palms on a specialized console on the giant robot's waist, the giant monolith roared to life. The giant colossus turned towards the hordes of infested. Tenten activated the weapon systems.

Two sets of thermal lancers began firing in succession into the masses, burning them to ashes within seconds. The other colossi acted on their own accord, spreading out to support all the other teams.

Mutalisks screeched overhead, wheeling down from the sky to destroy the towering robots. The reaver's missile launchers instantly locked on to the flying worms as they attacked the colossi's shields. A swarm of 7 mutalisks flew past, right in front of one of the reavers. Both missile batteries fires full volleys into the unfortunate group. A single, badly wounded mutalisk flapped away, limping through the sky. A phoenix flew past it, and a fireball from the back incinerated that last one.

* * *

"Broodmother! The enemy has warped in additional forces! Our current forces are not strong enough to stop them!"

"We must buy more time! Use the latest experiments! Sacrifice as many as you need to get the time we require!"

* * *

Over the radio Shikamaru and the others began to hear some odd things. Naruto listened closely to the chatter that was going on all over from almost all of the demolition teams.

"My God, they're everywhere! …. They're hatching instantly!... When did zerglings have dorsal fins?! … Argh! We're under attack! ….. Disengage! Disengage!... We're cut off! Go, get out of here! Retreat!... What the hell?! ARGH!"

There were a ton of screams, both human and alien coming through the radio. There were so many voices that they had all become unintelligible. The only discernible things now were just tiny fragments of speech, but mostly just the screams of all three races. Suddenly, a clear voice came through.

"This is the captain of demolition team 1; we've been completely surrounded by masses of a new strain, possibly zergling in origin. These things hatch almost instantly, and now they're all triplets. Request assistance from any available friendly forces!"

"Shikamaru, we have to help them!" Naruto looked over at his friend.

Shikamaru wore a pained expression, "We can't help them. They're halfway across the base."

"We can't just leave them! What if we take all of the colossi and just burn our way through to them?"

"We'd be leaving the rest of our people behind, taking away their defenses. We would lose so many from the lack of firepower on our other fronts."

Naruto looked at his closest advisor, aghast at what he was saying. Was he really saying to leave comrades behind?

"They are our comrades; we don't abandon our comrades," Naruto argued back.

Shikamaru thought about his friend's words. They could lose possibly hundreds trying to save maybe two dozen. But not to do so would be abandoning their own in the middle of a hostile alien base. The teams were responsible shinobi, they knew the risks and had accepted them anyways, but he had a responsibility to protect those under his command, and to uphold the village's code of honor. Not to save them would be breaking that code.

"Naruto, I understand your position, I really do. But if we do this, we will lose the only advantage we have. We will be risking our one chance at victory!"

"I'm not leaving them behind to die."

"Okay, fine. We'll save them IF we get the chance. But right now let's just focus on keeping the battle here in our favor. Once we've done that then we'll go after them okay?"

Naruto nodded hesitantly, "Alright."

* * *

"Executor! The Gantrithor is fully powered once again. We await your orders!"

"Excellent. Get us in the air, cruise at 300 meters. All stations brace for cast-off!"

"Launching in 3…..2…1."

The main engines of the great ship came to life, the whole thing thrumming from their power. For the first time in weeks, the supercarrier Gantrithor II was back in the air where it belonged.

"We have reached atmospheric combat altitude," a crewmember reported, "300 meter height attained."

"Status check," Selendis looked over at a screen.

"Status check: all systems nominal."

"Tactical report."

"Shields at 100% power. All weapon systems are online and charged for combat."

"Then get us to the forward operations base at full speed."

"As you command, Executor!"

* * *

"Sai, are we ready?"

"Charges are in place, ready for detonation."

"Okay, then let's get out of this wretched place."

Ino and Sai began to run up the passage out of the lurker den. As they ran, Sai vaguely noticed that the buildings had veins connected to the creep that was spread across the floor. So, that was how the buildings worked; the buildings contained the DNA within the walls, it gets transferred via the creep, and then the hatcheries use the sequences to mutate that strain. When it was done the sequences returned to the structure. But in this case, the lurker required a specific set of conditions to be properly mutated, so hydralisks needed to actually go into the den before mutating. A simple system, yet intricate at the same time. Pity it was all about to die in a big fiery explosion.

"Okay, we're nearly out. Detonate!"

Sai used his chakra to connect to the bombs attached to the den's walls, causing a large chain explosion. The pair of them had only gotten a few paces out of the den when the heat and force of the blast nearly knocked them both off their feet. They turned to see their handiwork.

Huge holes had been blown out of the ceiling and walls by the bombs. The den was literally bleeding out, blood pouring out from the gaping wounds in its sides. The entire building shook. In fact, the explosion was so large that even the ground was shaking. Ino was a little concerned. She wasn't exactly a bomb expert or anything, but they hadn't used enough bombs to make an explosion that powerful… had they?

* * *

"Temari! We've got company!" Matsuri warned her friends.

Temari turned to see what her teammate had pointed out. Her eyes widened.

The masses of eggs were hatching. Fast. Out of each egg burst three of the weirdest looking zerglings she had ever seen. They were not as tough-looking as the raptor, but the fin on their backs gave them a slightly more intimidating look. Inside the hatchery larvae were crawling out of holes in the walls, then encasing themselves into eggs. About 20 seconds later three more of those new zerglings hatched. Their numbers were increasing exponentially by the minute.

"Doesn't matter," Temari swatted them all back with a gust of wind from her giant fan, "They'll all burn along with this place when the charges go off."

Matsuri had to agree with that one. They had brought a special type of bomb specifically for this task. Based on the idea of unquenchable fire like Amaterasu, the bombs contained a special type of "sticky fire". The fuel for the fire would stick to whatever surface it comes in contact with, ensuring maximum damage. The fire itself wouldn't stop until the fuel was completely burned away, and since that took quite some time that leaves plenty of time for it to spread past the fuel source. The actual explosion part of the bomb really was simply to propel the fire in all directions rather than do damage.

The group of them ran out of the hatchery, back out into the sunlight. Waiting for them was a giant mass of Zerg, including clusters of banelings. Temari, Matsuri, and their other teammates skidded to a halt. They all dodged as volleys of projectiles flew at them. Temari looked back, and forwards. Surrounded in a large semi-circle to the front and sides, massive swarms of those new zerglings bearing down on them from behind. Not exactly the most optimal situation they could have found themselves in.


End file.
